[6][7] In January 1989, guitarist Kai Hansen left Helloween and founded Gamma Ray, with whom he has played and recorded ever since.

[8] Former guitarist Roland Grapow and drummer Uli Kusch were not asked to re-join, with Grosskopf stating "it would be too many people".

[11] This new line-up released an original song, "Pumpkins United", on 13 October 2017 on which Deris, Hansen, and Kiske all share lead vocals.

[17] On 21 August 2018, the band announced that, at the request of their label Nuclear Blast, they would all remain together and that a new studio album would be recorded later in 2018 for a planned 2020 release, with Weikath, Hansen and Deris acting as a "songwriting trio".

[19] On 1 June 2020, Helloween confirmed that they had "decided to shift the release" of their new album to early next year, with Ronald Prent mixing it.

Markus Staiger (founder of Nuclear Blast) was initially against it and tried to convince the band to chose another one, but the musicians' opinion prevailed.

[22] Writing for Sonicperspectives.com, Jonathan Smith wrote that “ it’s certainly up there in the short list of the best material this band has ever produced”, giving the album a rating of 9/10.

"[24] Sebastian Kessler, from the German edition of Metal Hammer, praised the album for not offering "flat copies of past masterpieces or denying sound and style developments of the last decades".

[26] Jens Peters, from Rock Hard, said Helloween was "THE album that every Teutonic Metal fan has been waiting for since the big split in the late eighties / early nineties".

[25] Writing for BraveWords, Paul Stenning offered "Huge credit must also go to Dennis Ward and Charlie Bauerfeind for their work in balancing the combination of singers and performers," and described how it is "hard to choose standout songs here as they are all classic Helloween - sometimes they recall the eighties, sometimes the early 90s and others the 2000s.