This meant that they could only do band rehearsals and such on weekends, and this put a major stopper on things. A second live video titled Lust for Live was shot during the show in Hamburg which also has been released as a live CD called The Power of Metal in December.Īnd then a big change! As plans for the band's fourth album came along, Hansen and Schlächter were annoyed by the fact that Scheepers lived such a far way away from Hamburg. I&G was presented to the fans live on the socalled Melodic Metal strikes back festivals, all in all four shows presenting Helicon, Conception and Rage and GammaRay as co-headliners. The album's style comes closer to Heading's one again as Kai seemed to realize that the best music he is able to compose is that bombastic speed metal. The album called Insanity & Genius finally was released in June 1993. Besides, the band began to build their own studio which took quite a while so that the band didn't start the recordings for their new album before 1993. But this time with no good news for the fans: The rhythm section (Uli & Uwe) left because of personnel disagreemant and was replaced by a pretty young rhythm section of one of Hamburg's demobands called Anesthesia, Jan Rubach (bass) and Thomas Nack (drums).
A 50-date worlwide tour followed.Īfter the japanese tour in the beginning of 1992, GammaRay were in the media again. The style vastly differs from Heading's one, and the lyrics are completely depressive as a result of the Gulf War raging that time. With some brand new songs in their bags GammaRay enter the studio under the control of producer Tommy Newton who did a fantastic job on the album called Sigh no more which has been released in September 1991. In February 1991 the band is rehearsing for the recordings of the second album in a small remoted house in Denmark. As a documentary a live video called Heading for the East was shot during the Tokyo show. The tour was a big success especially in Japan. Right in time with the tour a new EP called Heaven can wait was released in September 1990, including - beside a re-recorded version of the titletrack - one brand new song called Who do you think you are? and three songs that were left from the Heading for tomorrow recording session. With him, the line-up of GammaRay live world premiere was completed: Ralf Scheepers (vocals), Dirk Schlächter (guitar), Uwe Wessel (bass), Uli Kusch (drums) and of course mastermind Kai Hansen (guitars, vocals).
Finally, a new drummer was found in the person of Uli Kusch (ex-Holy Moses, ex-Helloween, now Masterplan). It took some time until GammaRay entered the world's stages for the first time because right after the recordings drummer Mathias Burchardt decided to quit as he wanted to concentrate on his studying completely. While Helloween changed their style of music a bit finding its creative climax in their album Chameleon, Kai together with his new band GammaRay sticked to the kind of music that made Helloween famous that time: melodic and bombastic power metal with positive and critical lyrics, fantastic guitar work and wonderful vocals. In January 1990 that line-up released the album Heading for Tomorrow, which has reached huge success especially in Germany and in Japan. In the beginning of the project Kai did not have the intention to form a new band but as the recordings with the studio-musicians went so well sourrounded by a relaxed atmosphere among the musicians it soon became obvious: Gamma Ray was born.
Eventually, Hansen decided to form his own project, with long-time friend Ralf Scheepers (vocals), Uwe Wessel (bass) and Mathias Burchard (drums). In 1988, after spending four years with Helloween, guitarist and songwriter Kai Hansen decided to leave the band due to, as officially announced, the enormous touring activities of the band.