"A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic." - Josef Stalin.
Savatage is one of those bands that is just genuinely difficult to classify. To call them simply "heavy metal" would be an insult to their multi-faceted sound, and to try to pigeonhole them into any single category would be a nearly impossible task. With numerous personnel changes and radical shifts in sound since their debut album, Savatage is hardly the same band it was a decade ago. A heavy metal band with an abundance of power and style when they left the gate, Savatage is bending over backwards these days to prove themselves as a force to be reckoned with, and they are succeeding at it. Their latest offering, DEAD WINTER DEAD (1995 Atlantic Records) is a monumental achievement indeed.
"And every prayer we pray at night has somehow lost it's meaning."
The story behind this "concept album", the brainchild of writer/producers Paul O'Neill and Jon Oliva, is a simple yet poignant one. Our story begins in 1990 with the Berlin wall coming down and a young Serbian soldier finding himself on one side of a conflict, while on the opposing side a young Muslim girl he does not know comes to the aid of her own people. Through the atrocities of war and the common link of a strange, old man who nightly risks oncoming mortar fire to stand atop the rubble of his once beloved city and play stirring pieces by Mozart on his cello, the two enemies find an unlikely love in each other, and a hope for their futures. The entire story is witnessed by an ancient stone gargoyle who sits quietly on the high belfry of an old and battered church in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. The story is indeed a powerful one, yet through O'Neill's masterful writing skills, the story remains a subtle feeling throughout the entire album rather than a clichéd and overpowering lecture on war, making it easy to take each song on it's own away from the story as a whole.
"Tell me if you win would it show, in a thousand years who would know, as a million lives come and go on this same piece of ground."
As stated earlier, Savatage is a band of numerous changes over it's career. DEAD WINTER DEAD finds a Savatage that seems to be able to mix the pounding and thrashing of melodic heavy metal seamlessly with the moving sounds of a classical orchestra, thus producing an eerie and unique sound in what the band calls it's own brand of "Symphonic Rock". Soft in some spots and hammering mercilessly at us in others, the album's flow of highs and lows is a ride from the soft waters of a summer lake to the rapids of early spring, and back again. Probably the most obvious of the unique features of this latest album is the vocals. After the band's 1991 release of STREETS: A ROCK OPERA, Jon Oliva left the band's vocal position and took up his place in the band solely as writer/producer, letting the hugely talented Zak Stevens to take over the vocal duties on the bands 2 following releases. Zak Stevens's voice is, in my humble opinion, one of the absolute best in rock music today. But DEAD WINTER DEAD finds Stevens still singing the majority of the songs, while Oliva returns to sing a few with the band again. The end result is something that still send chills down my spine each time I listen to this album. Stevens, with his powerful and almost operatic vocals seem to almost represent the hope of the situation in Bosnia, while on the other side of the coin is Oliva. Oliva's voice, while just as powerful as Stevens, takes on a more menacing quality, seeming to represent the inherently evil nature of war itself. Taking on almost an Alice Cooper-ish quality, the sinister voice of Oliva, complete with an ominous and mocking laughter, slices like a bone saw through the hopeful attitude of the Stevens vocals.
"Still I've hung on every word 'till my hands are bleeding."
As stated earlier, the concept of the album is never overplayed or overblown in the lyrics, but in the music itself the story unfolds. The guitars of Chris Caffery and Al Pitrelli are crisp, melodic and moving, and they never seem to clash with the soft orchestrations throughout the album, but accent them and work within them to give the songs a truly classical feel. Indeed classical music is represented throughout the album. "Memory", a haunting intro to the more thundering title track, is laced with the writings of Beethoven. The long instrumental "Mozart and Madness", which makes up the center "act" of the story, is Mozart creations mixed with hard rock at it's best. Here the orchestra represents the Muslims on one side of the fighting, while Savatage themselves thunder and boom in return representing the Serbs. The opposing musical forces battle back and forth, while now and again the somber cello playing of the tired old man drifts across the battlefield. The song is very moving, and is perhaps one of the most ambitious undertakings ever to appear on a rock album. This is rock and roll that needs to be taken very seriously.
But to break this wonderful band down one step further, there is the one single element of Savatage's music that stands out the boldest for me, and that is an honest-to-goodness piano. Keyboards in rock music is nothing new, every band sooner or later experiments with them, but few bands can add a simple piano and have it work well within the heavier sounding music styles. Probably the most obvious examples would be Blue Oyster Cult and Queen, two very different bands that use the soft sound of a single piano piece to accent their music. In fact, on some of the softer ballads on the album, Savatage seems to border on the style of Queen. Just the guitar solo's on songs like "This is the Time (1990)", have Queen's Brian May written all over them, and it's plain to see where the band might have gotten some of it's influence.
"Where this all has led.... Dead Winter Dead."
In closing, this album marks a huge achievement to this band that just gets better and better every step of the way. With DEAD WINTER DEAD there is something for everyone. Powerful ballads, blistering heavy songs, deep lyrics and songwriting... you name it. I once heard Savatage referred to as "the most underrated band in the world". I myself have called many a band I love that when they have failed to achieve the commercial success that they most clearly deserve, but I think in Savatage's case, they may have something here. They just can't get any better. And if they do, then I can't even begin to imagine what is next for them.
Robert "Torgo" Sedler
