Post by Henny Macc on Sept 20, 2023 17:33:47 GMT
Roland Grapow (August 30, 1959 - )
Years active: 1979-1983, 1989-present
Country of origin: Germany
Recorded vocal range: C♯2-G5 (D♭2-G5)
Band history:
- 1979-1983 - Rampage (lead guitar, vocals)
- 1989-2001 - Helloween (lead guitar, vocals)
- 1997-1999 - Roland Grapow (lead vocals, guitar, sitar)
- 1999-present - Roland Grapow (guitar, backing vocals)
- 2001-2003 - Masterplan (lead vocals, guitar, bass, keyboards)
- 2003-present - Masterplan (guitar, backing vocals)
- 2014 - Serious Black (guitar)
- 2014-present - Level 10 (guitar)
- 2017-present - Kreyson (guitar)
Recorded high notes:
G5: "Closer to Home (I'm Your Captain)", "No More Disguise", "The Chance" live Milan 1996, "The Four Seasons of Life", "The Winner", "Victims of Rock"
F♯5/G♭5: "Mr. Ego (Take Me Down)" live Europe 1996, "Release Your Mask", "The Four Seasons of Life"
F5: "No More Disguise", "The Chance" live Milan 1996
E5: "The Four Seasons of Life", "The Winner"
D♯5/E♭5: "A Tale That Wasn't Right" live Santo André 2020, "I Remember", "Mr. Ego (Take Me Down)" live Europe 1996, "Searching for Solutions", "The Winner", "We Burn" live Europe 1996, "Where the Rain Grows" live Spain 1996
D5: "Closer to Home (I'm Your Captain)", "Hold On"
C♯5/D♭5: "Future World" live Europe 1996, "No More Disguise", "Strange Friend", "The Bread of Charity", "The Four Seasons of Life", "The Winner", "Wake Up the Mountain" live Europe 1996
C5: "Hold On", "Memories", "Release Your Mask"
B4: "Closer to Home (I'm Your Captain)", "Everybody", "Hold On", "I Remember", "Mr. Ego (Take Me Down)" live Europe 1996, "My Deepest Winter", "Release Your Mask", "Show Me the Way", "Spirit Never Die" live at Masters of Rock 2013, "Tears of the Damned", "The Bread of Charity", "The Four Seasons of Life", "Victims of Rock", "Wake Up the Mountain" live Europe 1996
A♯4/B♭4: "Closer to Home (I'm Your Captain)", "Dr. Stein" live Milan 1996, "Memories", "Mr. Ego (Take Me Down)" live Europe 1996, "No More Disguise", "Novum Initium", "Searching for Solutions", "Someone's Crying" live Bonn 1992, "Sole Survivor" live Girona 1996, "Steel Tormentor" live Europe 1996, "The Winner", "Where the Rain Grows" live Spain 1996, "Why?" live Europe 1996
A4: "Closer to Home (I'm Your Captain)", "Dreams", "Eagle Fly Free" live Milan 1996, "I Remember", "Lovely Love", "Tears of the Damned", "The Bread of Charity", "The Four Seasons of Life", "The Winner", "Victims of Rock", "You Need a Friend"
G♯4/A♭4: "Eagle Fly Free" live Milan 1996, "I Remember", "Memories", "My Deepest Winter", "No More Disguise", "Searching for Solutions", "Show Me the Way", "Strange Friend", "Tears of the Damned", "The Bread of Charity", "The Chance" live Milan 1996, "The Four Seasons of Life", "We Burn" live Europe 1996, "Why?" live Europe 1996
Recorded low notes:
E3: "Dreams", "Everybody", "I Remember", "The Winner"
D♯3/E♭3: "Searching for Solutions"
D3: "Hold On", "Novum Initium"
C♯3/D♭3: "A Tale That Wasn't Right" live Santo André 2020, "Release Your Mask", "Show Me the Way", "Strange Friend"
C3: "Everybody", "The Four Seasons of Life"
B2: "A Tale That Wasn't Right" live Santo André 2020, "I Remember", "My Deepest Winter"
A2: "Hold On"
G♯2/A♭2: "No More Disguise", "Release Your Mask", "Show Me the Way", "Strange Friend", "The Four Seasons of Life"
F♯2/G♭2: "Strange Friend", "Release Your Mask"
F2: "I Remember"
E2: "Release Your Mask", "Strange Friend"
C♯2/D♭2: "Strange Friend"
.......................................................
*Italics marks non-melodic notes.
*Underlines mark notes in backing vocals or otherwise muffled/obscured in the song mix.
{Album ranges}
Rampage:
Roland Grapow:
Sebastien:
Rampage:
- Victims of Rock (1981) - -G5
- Love Lights Up the Night (1982) - C3-B4
Roland Grapow:
- The Four Seasons of Life (1997) - C♯2-G5
- I Remember (1997) - F2-A2-D5-E♭5
Sebastien:
- Dark Chambers of Déjà Vu (2015) - B2-B4
{Detailed bio}
Roland Grapow is best known as the current guitarist of Masterplan and former guitarist of Helloween...but that is to say nothing less about his abilities as a vocalist! He has served a significant supporting vocal role in various bands such as Rampage, Helloween, and Masterplan, and has also had a solo career that he sang lead vocals in for the early portion of. In terms of technical ability, he is quite vocally impressive - with a wide range, and a notably strong high range spanning well into the fifth octave with considerable strength, consistency, and blending ability, as well as the ability to sustain notes and sing melodies up to E5 and higher. He is also very obviously a baritone, with a deep vocal tone and a pretty solid low range that he makes good use of on his solo material. If there is one notable weakness to his singing, however, it is that he doesn't always have the best control over his tone in the upper fourth and lower fifth octave - as he can sometimes end up sounding very nasal in that area in a way that is not the most pleasant to listen to. Perhaps for this reason, he took a step away from singing lead vocals after a certain point in his career, and instead mainly focused on being a guitarist and backing vocalist. Regardless of this though, he certainly is someone who has his fair share of commendable vocal moments as well and deserves recognition for that.
Grapow began his musical career around 1979 in local Hamburg band Rampage, in which he initially split the role of vocalist with the band's other guitarist Karsten Heyer and bassist Joerg Schaedlich. This was the vocal arrangement that was featured on the band's first album, Victims of Rock, which was released in 1981. Though their music was not particularly vocally demanding, there were some early signs of potential from Grapow's performance on it, such as the opening scream in the title track. After this, the band hired dedicated vocalist Hans-Heinrich Barth to serve as frontman, and recorded their second album, Love Lights Up the Night in 1982. Most of this album was sung by Barth, but there were still certain vocal appearances by the other members, including Grapow on the tracks "Dreams" and "Everybody". Following the release of this album, Grapow left the band in 1983, and they disbanded a few years after. Between the years of 1983 and 1988, Grapow became inactive with music and instead focused on his day job as a car mechanic. From what he has described, he had no plans of veering from this career path and had mostly given up on the rock 'n' roll dream, until he received a call from Helloween guitarist Michael Weikath, who had apparently seen him play with Rampage years prior, asking him to join the band.
In 1989, Grapow official became a new member of Helloween, stepping into the place of their recently departed guitarist/vocalist Kai Hansen, and toured with them shortly after. He released two albums with the lineup that he joined as part of, 1991's Pink Bubbles Go Ape and 1993's Chameleon, before both lead vocalist Michael Kiske and drummer Ingo Schwichtenberg were fired from the band, resulting in a significant change to the band's sound thereafter. In 1994, Helloween entered a new era, with new frontman Andi Deris and drummer/backing vocalist Uli Kusch taking the place of the departed members. This lineup proved to be quite successful in terms of both its musical output and its function as a unit, releasing a fairly well-received string of albums - 1994's Master of the Rings, 1996's The Time of the Oath, 1998's Better Than Raw, the 1999 covers album Metal Jukebox, and 2000's The Dark Ride. They also recorded and released the live album/DVD High Live in 1996 with this lineup, which effectively showcased the strong vocal additions that Grapow and Kusch made to the band - with the two of them singing many of the high harmonies in various songs, and giving those tracks a much fuller vocal sound than they would receive in other Helloween lineups. Grapow's vocal abilities were also featured in the studio on the B-side of the 1995 "Sole Survivor" single (and later on the expanded edition of Master of the Rings), with him singing lead on a cover of Grand Funk Railroad's "I'm Your Captain (Closer to Home)" - the only Helloween studio track that is not sung by Hansen, Kiske, or Deris. Though this Helloween lineup had a lot going for it overall, Grapow and Kusch were both later fired from the band in 2001 due to their conflicting involvement in other musical projects, as the other members wanted bandmates who were primarily focused on Helloween.
Among the other projects that may have contributed to this sentiment from the other Helloween members' sentiment was Grapow beginning to pursue a solo career in 1997, releasing his first album, The Four Seasons of Life, that year. On this album, he played all the guitars and handled the majority of vocals himself, with Kusch playing the drums and Helloween bassist Markus Grosskopf playing bass, along with session musician Ferdy Doernberg on keyboards. On this album, Grapow really pushed his limits vocally, singing intensely high melodies in songs like "The Winner" and the title track, in addition to showcasing his natural baritone range on songs like "Strange Friend" and "No More Disguise". One particularly impressive song vocally was "Searching for Solutions", a duet with former Gamma Ray lead vocalist Ralf Scheepers, in which Grapow did a fairly competent job of matching some of the wailing high notes in Scheeper's parts. Despite all this, however, Grapow only ever made one more release as a lead vocalist - an EP later in 1997 titled I Remember. He released a second album titled Kaleidoscope in 1999, but for this one he recruited former Yngwie Malmsteen singer Michael Vescera to provide vocals, and instead focused on solely on guitar and songwriting himself. Grapow has continued to sometimes tour as a solo artist since then, but always with the support of a dedicated frontman rather than doing as much singing himself.
Following their firing from Helloween, Grapow and Kusch continued to collaborate together, and formed the band Masterplan in 2001. This band began with just the two of them, and Grapow serving all other roles besides drums for the first two years that it was just a studio project. However, for the purposes of recording demos, they recruited Symphony X singer Russell Allen as a session vocalist. The rest of the band's lineup filled out in 2003 with renowned vocalist Jørn Lande, bassist Jan S. Eckert, and keyboardist Axel Mackenrott. The band has gone through a handful of lineup changes over the years, with Grapow and Mackenrott remaining as the only consistent members, but continues to be Grapow's main project to this day. They have released six albums - Masterplan (2003), Aeronautics (2005), MK II (2007), Time to Be King (2010), Novum Initium (2013), and the Helloween covers album Pumpkings in 2017, which is comprised of re-recordings of songs that Grapow wrote in that band. Most notably, the title track of Novum Initium featured a small portion of the song with Grapow on lead vocals, in between current frontman Rick Altzi singing the rest.
Aside from his ongoing work with Masterplan, Grapow has become very active as a producer over the years, producing albums for a number of Czech and Slovakian metal bands, and often doing guest guitar or backing vocal parts some of these albums. He has also gone on to collaborate with Russell Allen again in the project Level 10, which released its debut album Chapter One in 2015. In addition to that, he also joined Czech band Kreyson in 2017 and recorded the single "Přátelství" with them in 2017, though he has yet to be featured on any full-length releases by them. Overall, Grapow seems mostly content focusing on being a guitarist and producer nowadays and has not done as much as a vocalist in the last 20 years or so, but there are still occasional moments where he gets behind the microphone every now and then - for instance, in 2015, he was featured as a vocalist on the Sebastien album Dark Chambers of Déjà Vu, singing lead vocals on the track "My Deepest Winter" by Sebastien. I was also able to find a performance of the Helloween song "A Tale That Wasn't Right" with his solo band from 2020, in which he sings lead vocals on the verses, though he still opts for having his frontman sing the high parts on the choruses. I am not sure if part of the reason that he avoids singing as much nowadays might have to do with range degradation over the years, but if he decides to do more as a vocalist again at some point, I would still welcome it.
Roland Grapow is best known as the current guitarist of Masterplan and former guitarist of Helloween...but that is to say nothing less about his abilities as a vocalist! He has served a significant supporting vocal role in various bands such as Rampage, Helloween, and Masterplan, and has also had a solo career that he sang lead vocals in for the early portion of. In terms of technical ability, he is quite vocally impressive - with a wide range, and a notably strong high range spanning well into the fifth octave with considerable strength, consistency, and blending ability, as well as the ability to sustain notes and sing melodies up to E5 and higher. He is also very obviously a baritone, with a deep vocal tone and a pretty solid low range that he makes good use of on his solo material. If there is one notable weakness to his singing, however, it is that he doesn't always have the best control over his tone in the upper fourth and lower fifth octave - as he can sometimes end up sounding very nasal in that area in a way that is not the most pleasant to listen to. Perhaps for this reason, he took a step away from singing lead vocals after a certain point in his career, and instead mainly focused on being a guitarist and backing vocalist. Regardless of this though, he certainly is someone who has his fair share of commendable vocal moments as well and deserves recognition for that.
Grapow began his musical career around 1979 in local Hamburg band Rampage, in which he initially split the role of vocalist with the band's other guitarist Karsten Heyer and bassist Joerg Schaedlich. This was the vocal arrangement that was featured on the band's first album, Victims of Rock, which was released in 1981. Though their music was not particularly vocally demanding, there were some early signs of potential from Grapow's performance on it, such as the opening scream in the title track. After this, the band hired dedicated vocalist Hans-Heinrich Barth to serve as frontman, and recorded their second album, Love Lights Up the Night in 1982. Most of this album was sung by Barth, but there were still certain vocal appearances by the other members, including Grapow on the tracks "Dreams" and "Everybody". Following the release of this album, Grapow left the band in 1983, and they disbanded a few years after. Between the years of 1983 and 1988, Grapow became inactive with music and instead focused on his day job as a car mechanic. From what he has described, he had no plans of veering from this career path and had mostly given up on the rock 'n' roll dream, until he received a call from Helloween guitarist Michael Weikath, who had apparently seen him play with Rampage years prior, asking him to join the band.
In 1989, Grapow official became a new member of Helloween, stepping into the place of their recently departed guitarist/vocalist Kai Hansen, and toured with them shortly after. He released two albums with the lineup that he joined as part of, 1991's Pink Bubbles Go Ape and 1993's Chameleon, before both lead vocalist Michael Kiske and drummer Ingo Schwichtenberg were fired from the band, resulting in a significant change to the band's sound thereafter. In 1994, Helloween entered a new era, with new frontman Andi Deris and drummer/backing vocalist Uli Kusch taking the place of the departed members. This lineup proved to be quite successful in terms of both its musical output and its function as a unit, releasing a fairly well-received string of albums - 1994's Master of the Rings, 1996's The Time of the Oath, 1998's Better Than Raw, the 1999 covers album Metal Jukebox, and 2000's The Dark Ride. They also recorded and released the live album/DVD High Live in 1996 with this lineup, which effectively showcased the strong vocal additions that Grapow and Kusch made to the band - with the two of them singing many of the high harmonies in various songs, and giving those tracks a much fuller vocal sound than they would receive in other Helloween lineups. Grapow's vocal abilities were also featured in the studio on the B-side of the 1995 "Sole Survivor" single (and later on the expanded edition of Master of the Rings), with him singing lead on a cover of Grand Funk Railroad's "I'm Your Captain (Closer to Home)" - the only Helloween studio track that is not sung by Hansen, Kiske, or Deris. Though this Helloween lineup had a lot going for it overall, Grapow and Kusch were both later fired from the band in 2001 due to their conflicting involvement in other musical projects, as the other members wanted bandmates who were primarily focused on Helloween.
Among the other projects that may have contributed to this sentiment from the other Helloween members' sentiment was Grapow beginning to pursue a solo career in 1997, releasing his first album, The Four Seasons of Life, that year. On this album, he played all the guitars and handled the majority of vocals himself, with Kusch playing the drums and Helloween bassist Markus Grosskopf playing bass, along with session musician Ferdy Doernberg on keyboards. On this album, Grapow really pushed his limits vocally, singing intensely high melodies in songs like "The Winner" and the title track, in addition to showcasing his natural baritone range on songs like "Strange Friend" and "No More Disguise". One particularly impressive song vocally was "Searching for Solutions", a duet with former Gamma Ray lead vocalist Ralf Scheepers, in which Grapow did a fairly competent job of matching some of the wailing high notes in Scheeper's parts. Despite all this, however, Grapow only ever made one more release as a lead vocalist - an EP later in 1997 titled I Remember. He released a second album titled Kaleidoscope in 1999, but for this one he recruited former Yngwie Malmsteen singer Michael Vescera to provide vocals, and instead focused on solely on guitar and songwriting himself. Grapow has continued to sometimes tour as a solo artist since then, but always with the support of a dedicated frontman rather than doing as much singing himself.
Following their firing from Helloween, Grapow and Kusch continued to collaborate together, and formed the band Masterplan in 2001. This band began with just the two of them, and Grapow serving all other roles besides drums for the first two years that it was just a studio project. However, for the purposes of recording demos, they recruited Symphony X singer Russell Allen as a session vocalist. The rest of the band's lineup filled out in 2003 with renowned vocalist Jørn Lande, bassist Jan S. Eckert, and keyboardist Axel Mackenrott. The band has gone through a handful of lineup changes over the years, with Grapow and Mackenrott remaining as the only consistent members, but continues to be Grapow's main project to this day. They have released six albums - Masterplan (2003), Aeronautics (2005), MK II (2007), Time to Be King (2010), Novum Initium (2013), and the Helloween covers album Pumpkings in 2017, which is comprised of re-recordings of songs that Grapow wrote in that band. Most notably, the title track of Novum Initium featured a small portion of the song with Grapow on lead vocals, in between current frontman Rick Altzi singing the rest.
Aside from his ongoing work with Masterplan, Grapow has become very active as a producer over the years, producing albums for a number of Czech and Slovakian metal bands, and often doing guest guitar or backing vocal parts some of these albums. He has also gone on to collaborate with Russell Allen again in the project Level 10, which released its debut album Chapter One in 2015. In addition to that, he also joined Czech band Kreyson in 2017 and recorded the single "Přátelství" with them in 2017, though he has yet to be featured on any full-length releases by them. Overall, Grapow seems mostly content focusing on being a guitarist and producer nowadays and has not done as much as a vocalist in the last 20 years or so, but there are still occasional moments where he gets behind the microphone every now and then - for instance, in 2015, he was featured as a vocalist on the Sebastien album Dark Chambers of Déjà Vu, singing lead vocals on the track "My Deepest Winter" by Sebastien. I was also able to find a performance of the Helloween song "A Tale That Wasn't Right" with his solo band from 2020, in which he sings lead vocals on the verses, though he still opts for having his frontman sing the high parts on the choruses. I am not sure if part of the reason that he avoids singing as much nowadays might have to do with range degradation over the years, but if he decides to do more as a vocalist again at some point, I would still welcome it.
