Track Listing

1. Pink Bubbles Go Ape
2. Kids of the Century
3. Back on the Streets
4. Number One
5. Heavy Metal Hamsters
6. Goin' Home
7. Someone's Crying
8. Mankind
9. I'm Doin' Fine Crazy Man
10. The Chance
11. Your Turn
12. Blue Suede Shoes (single b-side)
13. Shit and Lobster (single b-side)
14. Les Hambourgeois (single b-side)
15. You Run With The Pack (single b-side)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20375 in Music
• Brand: EXP
• Released on: 2006-04-25
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Extra tracks, Original recording remastered
• Dimensions: .25 pounds

Album Description
Japanese remastered reissue adds 4 B-side bonus tracks 'Blue Suede Shoes', 'Shit & Lobster', 'Les Hambourgeois' & 'You Run With The Pack'. Victor. 2006.

Customer Reviews

Underrated even today! A great album with 4 Bonus Tracks
Coming out from a law-suit after their label change and a huge line-up change which leaves legendary guitarist-songwriter Kai Hansen out of the band, Helloween come back with "Pink Bubbles Go Ape". A record which was bashed by music critics due to the fact that the band changed their music to a small effect when compared to their highly praised Keeper Of The Seven Keys records.

"Pink Bubbles..." admitably has a really strange, even silly title but this is not the case with the song writing. The music departs a bit from the continuous double-bass drumming, power metal stile and is enriched with more progressive and at parts mainstream ideas. Some songs are softer than the usual tracks found on the Keeper records reminding more of heavy metal than power metal, but that's not a drawback for sure.

Without diving into each and every song, I'm going to name only the outstanding ones! "Mankind" is a great-epic and progressive song with wonderful vocal and musical variations. "The Chance" is a mid-paced heavy metal anthem, which contains some of the albums best vocals and solos and is the most known track from this release. "Someone's Crying" is the only song that could be categorized as pure power metal (fast double-base drumming & fast guitar soloing), a truly great song, which reminds a lot of their previous albums. "Your Turn" is a wonderful rock-blues ballad with great vocals and finally "Kids of the Century" is another fast song with smart lyrics and great solos.

The new guitarists R.Grapow proves to be a worthy replacement, as his guitar playing is outstanding and he also contributes some great tracks to the album. Vocalist Michael Kiske has improved even more (if that could be possible) in both technicality and emotion delivering his best vocal performance up to that point. While the other 3 band members, especially drummer Ingo and bassist Markus, continue to show how talented musicians they are.

The main drawback of this album was the thin production, but now this release offers a remaster of the original sound, thus a TRULY improved sound quality. The other drawback are tracks 1,5,9, but the 4 Bonus Tracks make up for that one also, especially You Run With The Pack and the cover of Blue Suede Shoes.

You should definitely give this album a chance, if you enjoyed Helloweens previous releases, as you can see how the band progresses and doesn't continue repeating itself for the sake of record sales.

Not Helloween's Best but it sounds better
This by far isn't my favorite Helloween album but it has it's moments. This 2006 Remastered/ Expanded Edition of Pink Bubbles Go Ape is still worth it even if you have the original especially if you don't have all the singles with the bonus tracks (which are only 4 tracks, there should have been more on this). Anyways this version definately sounds better than the original.

Musically talented and put down by the musically limited
Yes, this album followed two enormous ones (keepers 1& 2). However, the musical quality of "Someones Crying" and "Mankind" are some of the best songs that Helloween ever produced as far as lyrics, vocals, guitars, and drums are concerned. And of course "Your Turn" is a nice change for Helloween. The B-Sides "You Run With The Pack" and "S**t and Lobsters" are melodic and talented as well. Some songs on this album such as "Number One" may really turn some people off because it lacks the "metal" feel, however, it is not bad either. I would have given this album 4 stars because of the song "Heavy Metal Hamsters." That song is just too cheesy for my taste. However, the other songs demand 5 stars :-). If you only like metal then this album may dissappoint you. But if you admire creativity this album is worth getting. Make no mistake though: "Someone's Crying" is one of the fastest songs that Helloween has written.