The
spectacle of Matt Sinner’s Rock meets Classical project seems a natural segue
into the next chapter of our memoir, the incredibly bittersweet spectacle of
Savatage.
Possibly no band on the planet have
had a stranger career trajectory than Savatage. These days, the name is not
much more than a foot-note or prelude in the history of the great Trans
Siberian Orchestra (TSO, not to be confused with the Toronto Symphony
Orchestra).
The TSO is in many respects a truly
successful Rock/Classical hybrid: both elements are indispensable to the whole,
and after a while the barriers between the two melt away and leave a kind of
mish-mash of old and new. It’s admirable in many ways, and hugely commercially
successful; the TSO sell out stadiums on both sides of the Atlantic.
My take on them? It’s pretty. It’s nice. It gives one a nice warm, tingly
feeling at Christmas time. But I don’t think it achieves true greatness of
either realm, of either a great opera or a great Rock album. Such as the
original Savatage records. Which brings me back to them. . .
A large proportion of TSO fans don’t
know who Savatage were. Others may vaguely be aware, having read somewhere, the
brains behind the TSO first met in a band called Savatage. Others still may
remember Savatage as the skeletal blue-print of what would become the TSO, a
kind of musical Petri-dish. And then, there’s the tiny-tiny number of us who
really miss the Savatage of old.
When Savatage burst on the scene in
’83, they were about as heavy a Metal band as you could find in those days. They
had a razor sharp guitar sound, courtesy of Chris Oliva, Demonic vocals from
brother John, and a cold, echoey production that just sent chills down our
headbanging spines. In that regard, the first three Savatage records are masterpieces:
Sirens, Dungeons are Calling, and Power of Night. They’re hard,
heavy and fast, cold as ice, hard as iron, tough as nails, whatever simile you
like; Savatage were the last band you’d expect to one day evolve into a
pseudo-classical collective. Tell anyone back in ’84 that the band that just
released Dungeons are Calling would one day best be known for their
piano balladry, and popular among upper-middle class retirees, they’d think you
insane. And yet. . . there it is.
Fight for the Rock was a misguided
attempt at commercial breakthrough: old and new fans agree it doesn’t count
(though hang onto that thought). Hall of the Mountain King was a
triumphant return to form, and then. . .things got weird.
Gutter Ballet had bits of the
old Savatage on it – but also traces of a new, mellower, gentler Savatage, more
in line with Andrew Lloyd Webber than Ronnie James Dio. As a huge fan of
musical theatre myself, I personally could not condemn the attempt, but could
not bring myself to love these records either. My trouble with almost
everything Savatage have done since Gutter Ballet is that it all pretty
much sounds like “Gutter Ballet”. Long, meandering, piano-ey ballady preludes
that always seem to be building up to something and not really amounting to
anything. Too often I find myself wondering where it’s all going, what’s it all
in aid of, where’s the meat-and-potatoes pay-off. I’m not a punk: I don’t
believe that songs need to confine themselves to three chords in three minutes.
But I do believe that build-up needs to justify itself in payoff, that
disparate elements need to amount to something, and journeys have to go
somewhere. Rush, Wintersun, Luca Turilli and Ritchie Blackmore have, to my
mind, all pulled it off; I just don’t feel it with Savatage, though it be their
raison d’etre as a band. And while I’ve marvelled time and again
at the vocal acrobatics of “Wake of the Magellan”, I can hardly bring myself to
sit through the album as a whole.
This all came to mind as both
projects took the stage at Wacken: a short set by the band Savatage heavily heavily
favouring its latter period, morphing into what most folk consider the real
point of the story: the Trans Siberian Orchestra. And there’s me in the crowd,
admiring the undeniable artistry and talent of all involved, but not enough to
erase the longing for the Sirens of
old.
The Dungeons still call.
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