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I recently bought Chameleon, which is hated by many. I wanted to get this album since I wanted to know if the album was bad or not and since I enjoyed Rabbit Don't Come Easy, which seems to be disliked by quite a lot, I had a feeling I would enjoy Chameleon and I do enjoy listening to the album. I can understand why a lot of people don't like this album at all, but in my opinion, this is a good album.

There are some great songs on this album such as First Time and Giants. First Time is one of the very few songs on this album that is power metal and is the closest to sounding like Helloween's previous works. Giants is another great song. It's heavy and like First Time, it sounds like the previous stuff from the band and a few songs on their later albums sound a little bit like this song (e.g. Still I Don't Know, a bonus track from The Time Of The Oath). The keyboard sounds here are interesting, especially at the start of the intro. The solo is great and it's power metal-ish.

There are some power ballads in this song and I find them very interesting, especially Windmill. I Don't Wanna Cry No More is a great ballad. Good acoustic guitars used here. Windmill is another ballad I like and in my opinion, this is the best song on the album along with First Time. The lyrics go well with the song and while it does sounds a bit like a Disney song, but that doesn't really bother me since this was made by Helloween. Also, Michael Kiske sings brilliantly in this song. I think his singing is great throughout the album and is better then how he sung on the Keeper albums (on the Keeper albums, he sounded almost exactly like Bruce Dickinson).

Now onto some of the songs that aren't as great as the ones I mentioned before, but are good. I like songs such as When The Sinner, Music and Step Out Of Hell. When the Sinner is a good song from this album with some pop and jazz influences. Music is also a good song. It's slow and has some cool guitar riffs and solos. However, I think it goes on a bit too long. I think the song should've been a bit shorter. Step Out of Hell sounds Queensrÿche-ish to me since I have listened to Empire and some songs from that album sounds like Step Out of Hell). I find the solos and riffs on this song very good.

I'll now talk about the rest of the songs on the album. Crazy Cat, I think is the weakest song on the album and I also think this is one of the worst songs made by Helloween. It contains 50s rock n' roll influences and it very much reminds me of Rock Around the Clock. So overall, not a good Helloween song, but I find it OK. Revolution Now is an alright song, it sounds very 60s-ish. I only have one problem with this song and that's the track length. I think it goes on a bit too long (8 minutes) and would've be better if it was about 2 minutes shorter. In The Night is another alright song, it's a pop-ish song, but I can tolerate some pop songs. There's some good acoustic works and Kiske sings very good here, but that's about it for this song.

I Believe is the longest song on the album (the original album track list that is and not including any bonus tracks from this album), but it being 9 minutes long I think is too long. The song in the middle makes me think that it could've been with being shorter. However, I like Kiske's singing here. And the album closes with Longing. Another ballad with good acoustic guitars and again, great singing by Kiske. There's also an orchestra playing here, which makes the song sound very good.

Since I own the expanded edition of Chameleon and have listened to the bonus tracks, I will talk about them as well. There are some bonus tracks that I like such as I Don't Care You Don't Care, Oriental Journey, Cut in the Middle and the demo version of Windill. I Don't Care You Don't Care starts off with a solo that's quite good. I get a bit of a laugh from the chorus. Oriental Journey is an instrumental song. It's heavy, it has great guitar works and bass performance by Markus Grosskopf here is very good. I like the chorus for Cut in the Middle and the guitar riffs. Kiske sounds a lot like Dickinson (like he did on the Keeper albums). Although I don't really care about demos, but the demo version for Windmill is pretty good and it uses an orchestra, but I prefer the album version.

There's a funny interview audio track with Michael Weikath entitled Introduction. I won't spoil it. Basically, Weikath tells the interviewer about a song he wrote and claims it to be very good, but the interviewer disagrees. The song after this interview is Get Me Out of Here, which is the song that was played on the interview, but with different lyrics and Kiske singing. I don't really like the lyrics for this song, but other than that, it's not bad.

There's two bonus tracks that I don't like on this album, which is Red Socks and the Smell of Trees (stupid song title), another instrumental song on this album. This song is about 11 minutes long and is the only 10+ minute song Helloween have ever made outside the Keeper albums. Yet another song I think would be better if it was a few minutes shorter. The other bonus track that I don't like is Ain't Got Nothin' Better. It's an alright song, but there's nothing special about it.

Overall, I think this album is good. It's experimental and very musically adventurous and this is indeed very different compared to all the other Helloween albums. It was more rock than metal, but that doesn't bother me since there were still some metal songs and I liked most of the songs on the album.

While some of those well hated albums from bands I like and hated those albums (e.g. St. Anger and Risk), Chameleon is the opposite since I like it. :O I guess I'm able to like it since I really like Helloween a lot and they are my favourite metal band. There are Helloween fans that hate this album, but fair enough since they might only want them to make metal albums and nothing else. Fair enough as long as they have listened to the album a good amount of times and have given it a chance before giving it a verdict.

Just because Chameleon is very different to all the other Helloween albums and is hated by a lot doesn't mean anyone should be put off by it. You don't know what the album is like until you listen to it and given it a proper chance. If you didn't like the album on the first listen or two, listen to it a few more times before actually not liking it since it took a bit of time for me to get into it.

Overall rating: 8/10