Helloween are not slowing down. Barely a year on from their last record, singer Michael Kiske says the German power metal institution has all but wrapped the follow-up already.
Speaking to Brazil’s “Rock Mania“, Kiske looked back on the making of Giants & Monsters, released August 29, 2025 through Reigning Phoenix Music, and let slip that the band is much further along on the next one than anyone might expect.
Asked whether Giants & Monsters had been an enjoyable album to write and record, Kiske said the process was smoother than its predecessor, and that the band had more material than it knew what to do with.
He said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth):
“[It was] easy. It was much easier than the one before, which I explain, because we’ve been [back] together now for a number of years, the insecurities are not there anymore that you have in the beginning. So I think the latest record was more organic somehow. And we had way too many songs. It was not so easy to decide what goes on the record. And we already have, I would say, like, 90% at least already done for the new record. It’s not gonna be long. Which shows how creative the band is and how productive [we are].”
It is not the first time Kiske has hinted at this. In interviews around the album’s release last year, he mentioned the band had amassed more than 20 strong songs and that the next record was already written — so the stockpile has evidently been building for a while.
Kiske also described his unusual relationship with his own recordings: once something is finished, he tends not to play it again. That gave him a strange, distanced experience when he finally revisited the band’s two most recent albums:
“I’m the kind of person, when I finish something, even with my solo records, whatever it is, when it’s done, I usually don’t listen to it anymore. So I was just checking the mixes when we did the Helloween record, the first new one, and Giants & Monsters, I was listening to it when we did the mix, just to check the mix and whatever, which I would have done different anyway. But then I didn’t listen to it again. And I have actually now, when we were doing the festival things, in the plane, I listened to both records, and I had a real fresh impression, and I really liked it.”
That gap, he said, let him hear the music almost the way an outsider would:
“I think it’s perfect when you haven’t been listening to it more than once, like a while ago, or two years ago, or three years ago with the first one. It’s almost like a fan would listen to it because you haven’t been listening to it. And I was excited. It’s relevant. It’s not just copying what we’ve done in the past. It has a new vibe, and it has an interesting energy and creativity. I mean, I like them both, but I think the second one is a bit more organic. I think it’s not that overloaded, like the first one we did.”
The productivity comes at a milestone moment. Helloween marked their 40th anniversary in 2025, the band formed in Hamburg in 1984, and Giants & Monsters arrived in the thick of a global anniversary tour.
The album was the band’s second since the reunion that brought back Kiske and co-founder Kai Hansen to sit alongside the existing lineup, giving Helloween an unusual three-vocalist setup with Kiske, Andi Deris and Hansen trading off. That arrangement lets the band cover any era of its catalogue with the right voice, and, as this album cycle suggests, has kept the songwriting flowing. Giants & Monsters was mixed at the storied Wisseloord Studios in Hilversum, Netherlands, whose credits include Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Def Leppard.
The band’s 2021 self-titled album, the first from this expanded lineup, hit the Top 10 in more than ten countries, including Germany, Spain, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland and Austria. Helloween also released a live album, Live At Budokan, on December 13, 2024, capturing their September 16, 2023 show at Tokyo’s Nippon Budokan.
