Male listeners might wanted to proceed with caution here… go dig up that old high school jock strap from the varsity football days… preventative measures will indeed be necessary for what's liable to occur within the quake and rumble that sends you tumbling compliments of Shock Machine!

Cross-legged sitting might be a good idea as well. 2/5 of Helloween present their case on this gritty new release first conspired a decade ago and thankfully never fully set aside.

Led by Olly Lugosi-Bela's brother?-churning out in a deep and guttural manner that's anything but what Helloween listeners have come to expect, Shock Machine is wholly heavy and will induce a fist-clenching reaction that settles well with a freely banging head and damp scowl no sooner than when "Careless Cries" bellows it's "I don't wanna hear it, I don't wanna know" rant.

Imagine something like a European flavored Motorhead-shocking, to say the least!

Lugosi at first sounds something like a crude form of Di'Anno before the differences crawl to the surface at around songs three and four, "Fame," and "Never Exist."

The pace set forth is grindingly slow-have a bottle of Tylenol close at hand just in case-and the sound, is pure English balls!

Or in this case, German, shall we say?

The recording is bass-heavy and hovers slightly above the "in-the-mud" range that works well at high volume-though car speakers may not welcome that extra surge of feedback overload!

Groskopf and Feldmann make for a formidable gut shot between the bass and guitar combination, with a fair amount of melody bleeding through openings resulting from the dominant shred that stings and scrapes its way onto the flesh of the matter-"Careless Cries," "Never Exist," "The Once Forgotten."

Uli Kusch picks up where the fallen Ingo Schwichtenberg once led off back in the beginning and lends just the right amount of back bone-never veering far off from the steady one-two delivery that emphasizes the "heavy" nature that makes this machine run.

Shock Machine is a muscle car that roars down a dark alleyway, belching out noxious fumes and screeching recklessly around every curve-this is a turbo-driven rush of intensity that takes heavy melodic rock into the lower depths with cam-flattening precision and needle-burying fervor!

I suppose nothing more needs to be said except… Welcome to the machine!

Released by Sanctuary Records

Review By Vinnie Apicella