A  second `pumpkin' helping will delight Bulgarian metal fans, as legendary German band Helloween comes back to Sofia for a show which promises to be as rousing as their previous performance in December 2003.

Helloween will play in Bulgaria on January 29 to promote their latest studio album, Keeper of the Seven Keys - the Legacy (released in October 2005), as part of their European tour of the same name.

The German musicians' newest record is a definitive comeback to their roots of 20 years ago and continues on the track to reviving their greatest classics, Keeper of the Seven Keys Part I (1987), and Keeper of the Seven Keys Part II (1988), the latter being their best known album featuring the classic line-up with vocalist Michael Kiske and guitarist Kai Hansen.

Keeper of the Seven Keys I and II have sold more than 250 000 copies in Germany alone and have catapulted the band to musical heights not only in their home country, but all over Europe, America and Japan as well.

"Alongside Switzerland's Celtic Frost and Sweden's Bathory, Germany's Helloween were possibly the most influential heavy metal band to come out of Europe during the 1980s," critic Ed Rivadavia wrote for allmusic.com. "By taking the hard riffing and minor key melodies handed down from metal masters like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden, then infusing them with the speed and energy introduced by the burgeoning thrash metal movement, Helloween crystallised the sonic ingredients of what is now known as power metal."

Since their glory years in the late 1980s, Helloween have been through a number of ups and downs. Hansen left the band in 1988, soon after the European tour for the Keeper II album, due to conflicts within the band and problems with the record company.

These same label problems prevented the musicians from releasing new material until 1991 when, after several rumours about the band breaking up, Pink Bubbles Go Ape came out, but it was a complete commercial and critical failure. Furthermore, the band's quirky attempts at humour had grown so forced that fans weren't sure what to make of furious metal anthems with names like the title track and Heavy Metal Hamsters.

Recorded by an obviously shell-shocked band, the follow-up, 1993's Chameleon, was so experimental and pop-influenced that the band lost most of its diehard fans.

To make matters worse, shortly after the release of Master of the Rings in 1994, which was a determined step in the right direction to reclaiming the European heavy metal throne, former Helloween drummer Ingo Schwichtenberg - a diagnosed manic depressive who had drug problems and was dismissed from the band - took his own life.

Shocked, but driven as ever, Helloween dedicated 1996's The Time of the Oath to their fallen friend, and, coincidentally, the album turned out to be the strongest since the glorious Keeper era, doing much to resurrect their career.

The Dark Ride (2000) marked an equally dark chapter in Helloween's history. "For me, this is our `Korn-Album', a New Metal-influenced something that resembles nothing of Helloween's well-established sound," guitarist and founding member Michael Weikath said, commenting in hindsight on the album.

After two contentious band members, guitarist Roland Grapow and drummer Uli Kusch, who were behind the change of direction in The Dark Ride, were urged to leave Helloween, Rabbit Don't Come Easy, released in 2003, was the second back-on-track record, which served as a vindication for Weikath. "Those who experiment don't know what they're doing! This eagerness for renewal - I don't know... our fans expect Helloween - nothing else!", he said, as quoted on the band's official website, helloween.org.

The 2003 record was released with a new line-up: young guitar player Sascha Gerstner, former member of Freedom Call, joined the German legends.

The current line-up, which will play on January 29 in Sofia consists of Andi Deris (vocals), Michael Weikath (guitar), Markus Grosskopf (bass), Sascha Gerstner (guitar) and the new drummer Dani Loeble (ex-Rawhead Rexx). Band members themselves have claimed that this is the strongest formula for success.

Even though international music media have declared the band dead a number of times, the German power metal act continue to be at the top of the international metal scene at the beginning of the third decade of their existence, having repeatedly reinvented themselves stylistically without eventually losing their trademark sound.

The concert in Bulgaria is scheduled to take place at the Winter Palace of Sports in Studentski Grad, Sofia, on January 29 at 8 pm. Tickets cost 16 leva and are on sale at the NDK box office, eventim.bg, ticketstream.bg, and the following shops: Orange, Music Fashion, Boardshop and Na Tumno. The event is organised by Joker Media (www.jokermedia.net).