Biography
His musical career started in 1978 in a band called Gentry, alongside Iron Savior's co-founder and producer Piet Sielck. In 1983 he and Michael Weikath founded Helloween, where he was guitarist and singer until Michael Kiske took over the microphone for the albums Keeper of the Seven Keys Part 1 and Keeper of the Seven Keys Part 2. Hansen left the band due to the extensive touring in 1988-89 and went on to form his own power metal band Gamma Ray. Hansen also joined Iron Savior as guitarist in 1997, but quit after a few years to focus his efforts on Gamma Ray. He has now forged a very successful career with Gamma Ray, releasing several albums and playing sold out tours across the globe.
Hansen participated in a large number of other projects. He appeared as a guest vocalist on Blind Guardian's albums Follow the Blind and Tales from the Twilight World. Around the same time, he and fellow Gamma Ray bandmate Dirk Schlächter collaborated on Angra's first full length album Angels Cry, both playing guitar solos in the song "Never Understand". He also collaborated on Angra's album Temple of Shadows released in 2004 doing vocals for the song "The Temple of Hate". Together with HammerFall he recorded a cover version of Helloween's I Want Out.
Hansen played the role of Regrin the dwarf in Avantasia's Metal Opera albums by Tobias Sammet. Later he was featured in the album The Scarecrow playing guitar in the song "Shelter from the Rain". He was also one of the guest musicians in Avantasia's 2010 world tour, which have put him to play live together with fellow ex-bandmate Michael Kiske, after more than twenty years since he left Helloween. After this tour it was announced via Michael Kiske's official website that Hansen would join his new band Unisonic, as they "instantly felt the magic of Helloween years again and had a lot of fun together on and off stage".
In 2005, he toured with the young German power/Viking metal band Stormwarrior from his home town of Hamburg as lead singer, playing material from his classic Helloween debut album "Walls of Jericho" - the favorite album and greatest influence of Stormwarrior. "Stormwarrior featuring Kai Hansen" returned in 2007 to play at the Magic Circle Festival in Bad Arolsen and at the Wacken Open Air Festival.
In 2008, Hansen played with Stormwarrior at Sweden Rock Festival 2008.
In 2011 he joined the hard-rock band Unisonic as the second guitarist, Micheal Kiske a great friend of Kai and ex-Helloween vocalist formed the band back in 2009 and provides the vocals. The band released its first album named Unisonic in 2012. Kai stated in a interview that despite now being in Unisonic he will not have less focus on Gamma Ray. And that the next Gamma Ray album should arrive in 2013.
Read more about this topic: Kai Hansen
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