Gamma Ray - 30 Years - Live Anniversary (2021)

Hamburg – rock city. The harbor city in the Northern parts of Germany is the home base for many rock and metal bands. One of them is Gamma Ray, founded by Helloween guitarist Kai Hansen. It feels like as it would have been yesterday that the glorious debut ’Heading for Tomorrow’ created excitement in the world of heavy metal. What started successful became a winning streak over time.

30 years and eleven records later, Gamma Ray is still active and as powerful as they have been in the early days. Although time didn’t stand still it is the spirit and passion for heavy metal that survived and could be maintained over all these years and make Gamma Ray to a Champion League player in metal.

The days of pandemic forced the band to adjust the planned activities for celebrating 30 years of Gamma Ray. Having a jubilee these days means that you can’t have a usual party but there are ways to celebrate. In this case it was a Gamma Ray concert, that was held at IIS Dome in Düsseldorf on August 27th, 2020 and streamed into the world. Under the flag of ’30 Years Live Anniversary’, Gamma Ray performed a set that covers all the steps from then to now.

With ‘Avalon’ and ‘Master of Confusion’ two songs from the latest studio album ‘Empire of the Dead’ have been presented in the top half of the set before the bottom part took care about the earlier days. With ‘Lust For Life’ no less than Ralf Scheepers, the first Gamma Ray frontman, joined and enriched classics like ‘One With the World’ and the legendary ‘Heading for Tomorrow’ with his great voice. And if you wonder why you hear fans in-between songs, the answer is rather simple. Of course, due to the pandemic there wasn’t any audience in the room. Gamma Ray asked fans though to scream and shout at home while watching the streaming event and later sent in the files. These files became part of this release, help to create a live atmosphere and is a nice idea to connect fans and band for such an anniversary.

’30 Years Live Anniversary’ is a great summary of what Gamma Ray achieved in three decades, an album that features classics of German heavy metal from a band that surely belongs to the spearhead of metal.