Towers of steel were built on the German metal arena in the early/mid-80’s; towers from where one could get a good grasp of what was going on around, and could get a good idea of what styles were being spawned, and in which direction the entire circus was going. For this youthful batch from Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony the name of the game was the good old classic heavy metal, think Scorpions, Accept, Faithful Breath (later Risk), but it was whole five years later when they were going to walk on this avenue of the finest, or rather up this stairway to heaven, under the name Heaven’s Gate.

Yes, this is the first incarnation of the relatively short-lived heavy metal sensation, and everyone seems to be doing a decent job at this early stage, with Thomas Rettke an already accomplished vocalist, pitching it quite high on the lively speedy opening title-track this one a well-deserved winker at Running Wild’s and Living Death’s first. Later on such rowdiness isn’t encountered as the album settles for a steady homogenous mid-paced stride (“Hell & Fire”, “Break the Law”) not far from what Judas Priest (check the song-titles again) were practicing at around the same time, only that here the urge to try something mellower and more welcoming (the blasé hard rockers “Powerdrive” & “Save My Life”) is stronger, and although the guys come chasing those benign ghosts away (the lively more intense “Devil’s Dreamer”), the overall impression isn’t exactly about bar brawls, street fights, and drunken confrontations the more serious epic “Bring up the Night” walking away with the winner’s prize for the highlight, a template the band explored more fully later on the Heaven’s Gate works.

Unpretentious light stuff that didn’t quite shoot the guys into the spotlight, but this fact didn’t dishearten them as they persevered by also changing their name to Carrion (one demo (“Heavy Metal”), 1987), and very shortly after to… well. And they did rule, for about a decade, with their effective unflinching brand of old school heavy metal, overcoming in-vogue temptations (the shaky trendy “Hell for Sale”) to end their career in a high note. The new millennium saw Rettke and the guitar player Sascha Paeth trying something rowdier and power metal-ish under the Redkey moniker, also bringing the original Steeltower axeman Andrè "Ace" Borawski (not a Heaven’s Gate member) to the fore. A decent if not downright extraordinary hesitation between the old and the new school, it failed to convince the fanbase that this project would be a distinguished sequel to the Heaven’s Gate legacy.

Well, the dog reached paradise once; it came, it saw, it conquered… it ruled for a bit… sure it can get another shot at glory; after all, these long-since completed towers still hold.