Kai Hansen has released "Wait And See", the third single from his solo album "Born With A Hammer", which earMUSIC will issue on September 18.
After "Welcome To Life" — all speed and open road — this one goes the other way. It is darker, tighter and more compressed, driven by sharp riffs and a rhythm that refuses to let up. Running underneath is something less expected: a faint electronic pulse that gives the track a restless, modern edge without lightening it. When the chorus arrives, it lands on the mix of power, melody and bite that has defined Hansen's writing since the early 1980s.
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What carries the song is not craft but appetite. Hansen is not reconstructing an era or proving a point about what he can still play. The riffs, the electronic detail and the directness of the performance all sound instinctive — the argument is not that he can still make music this forceful, but that he plainly still wants to. That is what keeps "Wait And See" from being one-dimensional despite being among the heaviest things on the record: the electronics, the shifting textures and a strong melodic instinct all pull against the weight.
The video was built from footage shot on a trip to Slovakia. There is no stage in it. Hansen drives a Mustang, travels across the country and works in the studio — a rarer, more ordinary look at the person behind the catalogue.
Across ten songs, "Born With A Hammer" moves between heavy metal, punk attitude, hard rock drive and melodic hooks. Eike Freese produced it and plays guitar; the band around Hansen is Alexander Dietz of HEAVEN SHALL BURN on guitar, Dan Wilding of CARCASS on drums — both of whom already worked with him on "XXX - Three Decades In Metal" — and Tim Hansen of INDUCTION on guitar.
The tracklist runs "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" and "Wonderland".
Hansen was born in Hamburg in 1963 and started playing in 1978 in GENTRY, alongside Piet Sielck, later of IRON SAVIOR. He co-founded HELLOWEEN with Michael Weikath in 1983 and stayed until 1989, singing and playing on the EP and three albums that include both parts of "Keeper Of The Seven Keys". He left to form GAMMA RAY, which became one of the German scene's most durable bands, and has recorded with BLIND GUARDIAN, ANGRA, HAMMERFALL, STORMWARRIOR, UNISONIC and Michael Kiske along the way. He rejoined HELLOWEEN in 2016. "Born With A Hammer" is the first record with his name alone on the front.