Helloween "Gambling With The Devil"

Gambling with the Devil is the twelfth studio album by German power metal band Helloween, released in 2007. The single "As Long as I Fall" is download-only and was released in late September. When asked about the album, bassist Markus Grosskopf commented:

“ It was an album without any concept, but still we had that concept with that little game on it, that little "Crack the Riddle". [...] And then, that was nice, it was a great piece of work and when you do such an output like Keeper III it's like you've got to open your head and empty it at first, close it and then start thinking new for Keeper thing you know, but then it's very, very hard work. You've got to think very different from what you do when you just write the songs so to say, just like writing a normal metal song or rock song, it's very different. But that's what we did with the Gambling with the Devil and I feel very good just doing proper decent songs. You cannot do always like this concept thing. [...] It's never easy, but once you got an idea you don't have to think about "Oh, that's five minutes missing" you know. What do I put in to make it fit for the concept? Fit it to make it fit in the concept of something, it's just like if there's a song of five minutes or four minutes and it's cool, you don't have to think about how is it fitting in the concept, if the song's good the song's good, it goes on the record. ”

The album has received mostly positive reviews, with critics hailing it as one of the band's strongest efforts in quite a while. Andi Deris' vocals on the album also got praise for their power, range and emotion.

The individual songwriting credits are missing from the booklet:
Tracks 3, 10 by Weikath
Tracks 5, 11 by Gerstner/Weikath
Tracks 6, 12 by Grosskopf
Tracks 2, 4, 7, 8, 9 by Deris

North American bonus track:
13. Never Surrender (04:51)

Another version includes these two bonus tracks:
13. Find My Freedom (06:30)
14. See The Night (06:10)

The limited first edition of Gambling With the Devil came with a scratch ticket that allowed fans to participate in a draw on the official Helloween website. The first prize was a paid flight for two including accommodation at the band hotel on an American tour date of the Hellish World Tour 2007/2008, while the other prizes included signed guitars and fan packages. Helloween created this contest in order to thank the fans for the successful 2005/2006 Legacy World Tour that was also filmed in the Live on 3 Continents DVD.

Recording information:

Recorded at Mi Sueno Studio, Tenerife (Spain) and G-Tracks Studio, Ebermannstadt, (Germany) from May to July 2007.

Mixed at Mi Sueno Studio, Tenerife, August 2007.