Kai Hansen — co-founder of HELLOWEEN, founder of GAMMA RAY and the man who effectively drew the blueprint for European power metal — has released "Welcome To Life," the second single from his solo album Born With A Hammer.
The track runs on driving guitars, abrupt tempo shifts and the sort of chorus Hansen has been writing since the Walls Of Jericho days, with punk and rock and roll rubbing up against the metal. Lyrically it is unusually plain-spoken for him: accepting life as it is, refusing to dwell on what is missing, and making the most of what you actually have.
Born With A Hammer collects ten songs and was produced by Eike Freese. Hansen surrounded himself with players from well outside the power metal circuit — Alexander Dietz of HEAVEN SHALL BURN on guitar, Dan Wilding of CARCASS on drums, and Tim Hansen of INDUCTION, the guitarist's son, also on guitar. The result leans harder and dirtier than the symphonic sheen much of the genre has drifted toward.
Born With A Hammer is out September 18 via earMUSIC, and it is Hansen's first proper solo record since 2016's XXX - Three Decades In Metal. The label has billed it as "raw, energetic, rebellious and unmistakably personal" — a description the two singles released so far have not contradicted. "Feeding The Beast" opened the campaign in June with a video; "Welcome To Life" arrives as a lyric video.
The timing is characteristically busy for the 63-year-old German. HELLOWEEN's reunited seven-piece line-up, which brought Hansen back to the stage alongside Michael Kiske and Andi Deris, remains an active touring concern, and Hansen has spent much of the last five years splitting his attention between that band's stadium-scale campaign and his own writing. Between HELLOWEEN's first two albums, the GAMMA RAY catalogue and a run of guest appearances stretching back to the 1980s, he has little left to prove — which may be exactly why the solo record sounds as unbothered as it does.
"Born With A Hammer" track listing:
- Feeding The Beast
- Welcome To Life
- Don't Care
- Wait And See
- Born With A Hammer
- I.D.G.A.F.
- End Of The Road
- Triple Trouble
- Invaders
- Wonderland