Many bands are born by splits and are fueled by feuds. Few however manage to lead a entire genre. One of them is Gamma Ray.

In 1989 and while Helloween are at the peak, having released “The Keeper Of The Seven Keys Part II” and touring with bands such as Iron Maiden, Anthrax and Exodus,  Kai Hansen announces his departure from the group for various reasons amongst which the claim that he didn’t like touring.

However, immediately after the split Hansen does not remain inactive. Apart from his collaboration with their Blind Guardian on “Follow The Blind” he enlists vocalist Ralf Scheepers (who in fact was offered the singer’s in Helloween before Michael Kiske), Uwe Wessel on bass and Mathias Burchardt on drums. With lineup completed the band needed a name. Gamma Ray is the title of a song by German progressive rockers Birth Control that Kai had seen live in between leaving Helloween and creating his new band.

In 1990 they released their debut album “Heading For Tomorrow”. The whole undertaking was not going to be anything more than a one album project for Hansen and Scheepers, something that is evident by the album cover that only displays Kai and Ralf. Soundwise the album followed the footsteps of Helloween’s “Walls Of Jericho” and “Keeper Of The Seven Keys Part I”. This sound and the fact that Helloween were inactive due to record label problems coupled with the critical and commercial success of the album, created the foundation in order for Gamma Ray to become a full fledged band with the replacement of Buchardt on drums by Uli Kusch and the addition of Dirk Schlächter as a second guitarist.

With this lineup they recorded and released the EP “Heaven Can Wait” first and later the album “Sigh No More” in 1991. This album, even if more commercial sounding than the rest  of Gamma Ray’s records before and after, it raised the band’s profile. Even if tracks such as “Rich And Famous”, “Father And Son” and “One With The World” are indeed more commercial, songs such as “Changes” are definitely not a dime a dozen. Plus it was also the first album on which the Judas Priest influence of Hansen as well as Scheepers began to emerge.

Two years later Gamma Ray record the disk which was to be their last with Ralf Scheepers, “Insanity And Genius”. Perhaps because of their internal problems (Uli Kusch and Uwe Wessel  were replaced by Thomas Nack and Jan Rubach respectively) Gamma Ray did not manage to raise themselves to the expectations they had left from their previous work. The sound changed once again and the songs are much more epic and even more cheerful than “Sigh No More”. Of course this does not mean that the album has no worthy tracks. “Tribute To The Past” for example, became a fan favourity, while “Heal Me” on which we hear Kai’s vocals and not Scheepers can be considered as prophetic.

The split between Scheepers and Gamma Ray, shocked many fans, but for the band it was a decision long coming. Apart from the geographic distance that separated them (Scheepers lived far from Hamburg that was the base of the rest of the band) a catalytic role was played by the decision of another singer to withdraw from his band. Scheepers had never hidden his adoration for Judas Priest and with Rob Halford out of the picture, he considered this to be the chance to realise his dream.

Despite the bad news, Kai Hansen’s decision to step up behind the microphone, something that he hadn’t done since Helloween in 1987, was the one that fast dispelled any doubts held by the fans on the bands future without Ralf.

And if any doubting Thomas still existed, the first notes of “Rebellion In Dreamland”, the inaugural song from “Land Of The Free” would have left them speechless. In 5 years Gamma Ray had reached the apex of their creativity. “Land Of The Free” tears along like a hurricane sweeping everything in its passage. It was declared album of the year by practically the total of the metal press, broke all sales records for a Gamma Ray album and for a lot of critics the album became “the definition of power metal”. From the second the album starts it’s classic , therefore mentioning individual tracks loses all meaning. The full tracklist is: “Rebellion in Dreamland" , "Man on a Mission", "Fairytale" , "All of the Damned" , "Rising of the Damned" , "Gods of Deliverance" , "Farewell" , "Salvation's Calling", "Land of the Free", "The Saviour" , "Abyss of the Void", "Time to Break Free", "Afterlife" and each one of them is simply a gem of European metal. A bit of extra attention should only be paid to “Time To Break Free” since this track reunites Kai Hansen with singer Michael Kiske for first time since Helloween even though Kiske had declared that he does not intend to sing on metal albums again. Also worth mentioning is the presence of Hansi Kursch of Blind Guardian on the background vocals of this album.

The “Somewhere Out In Space” album that followed also ushered in a new period of stability for the band. Jan Rubach and Thomas Nack give their place to Dan Zimmermann and Dirk Schlächter while  Schlächter’s place as guitarist and also keyboardist is filled by Henjo Richter. The addition of Richter also changed the sound of Gamma Ray as keyboards are more prominent on this record. “Somewhere Out In Space” became the band’s first concept album, with all tracks lyrically based around the idea of space travel. It’s difficult for a band to release two consecutive albums of same high quality, but Gamma Ray accomplished with this album and gave hits such as “Valley Of The Kings”, “Men, Martians And Machines” and of course the self-titled track. Meanwhile “Watcher In The Sky”, is part of the debut recording by Iron Saviour, a project that Kai Hansen began with his childhood friend and producer Piet Sielk and then drummer  of Blind Guardian, Thomen Stauch. It is also the only track on the album that doesn’t feature Kai’s vocals.

Two years later, it time with their touring and recording schedule, Gamma Ray released “Power Plant”. Soundwise this album follows in the footsteps that had established the band with the two previous records, with the all members contributing to the songwriting. This leads to a variety of textures as is evident if one compares track like “Send Me A Sign”, “Gardens Of The Sinner” and “Hand Of Fate”. Another interesting point is the choice of cover song that Gamma Ray made for this album. Up to now their covers were either from the repertoire of `70s rock (Uriah Heep, Birtch Control) or metal (Judas Priest, Holocaust). Therefore the choice of Pet Shop Boys was sure to cause surprise. Despite that Gamma Ray won the bet and “It's A Sin” become another anthem for the fans.

The two years between “Somewhere In Time” and their next studio album, find the band celebrating 10 years in the industry and the release of best of album was considered apt. There were two important differences, however, to the norm. First of all, the choice of tracks was given to the fans, with everyone being able to suggest three tracks from each album. Secondly, almost all the song that finally made it onto the compilation were re-recorded by the line-up of Hansen, Richter, Schlächter and Zimmermann. Also during this downtime Kai Hansen and Dan Zimmermann took part in the recordings of Iron Saviour’s second album titled “Unification”.

2001 marks the release of “No World Order”, the seventh Gamma Ray album and  the third with a stable line-up. The album signals the change in sound and the turn to 80’s influenced metal. Of course these influences were so intense that critics and audience noted the amazing resemblance of “Solid” to Judas Priest’s “Rapid Fire”. Lyrically the album deals with the battle against all tyranny, while the intro and title track deal with the Illuminati.

The distance between “No World Order” and “Majestic” was pretty much four years. During this time Gamma Ray released a live album, “Skeletons In The Closet”. The album was recorded in Barcelona and Strasbourg during the Skeletons In The Closet Tour, on which the band only performed tracks that had been selected by the fans via their web page.

“Majestic” was released in 2005 and it finds Gamma Ray returning to power metal. “Blood Religion” fast became a fan favorite and the band taped its show in Montreal  for a DVD entitled “Hell Yeah! The Awesome Foursome” that was released in 2008.

Like Metallica and Megadeth before them, Gamma Ray decided to rehash a hit from their past. But they took the idea a little farther with “Land Of The Free II” in 2007. Despite being close to the first Land Of The Free album, this sequel was more aggressive and with many more chanting refrains.

Unfortunately however it did not reach the greatness of its precursor. Even though the album may have not impressed the fans, the tour that followed it did. And this was because for first time Gamma Ray and Helloween shared the same stage. And as if that was not enough, Kai Hansen took to the stage with his old band mates for the first time in 20 almost years, reuniting with Helloween to perform “I Want Out” and “Future World” as part of the encore.

And this brings us to 2010 and the release of Gamma Ray’s new studio album, entitled “To The Metal”, whose review will be appearing shortly on Solidrock’s pages. This release also brought about Gamma Ray revisiting Greece once more, for two shows in Athens and Thessaloniki.  Let’s get ready for some good power metal!


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