Savatage - The Ultimate Box Set (2014) [14CD + DVD Limited Edition Box Set]

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Savatage - The Ultimate Box Set (2014) [14CD + DVD Limited Edition Box Set]

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Savatage - The Ultimate Box Set (2014) [14CD + DVD Limited Edition Box Set]

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Savatage - The Ultimate Box Set (2014) [14CD + DVD Limited Edition Box Set]

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Over 15 years into their career, Savatage refused to stay still – if anything, the group continued to improve in the '90s, as their 14th album, The Wake of Magellan, proved. Long ago, the group began fusing heavy metal with progressive rock, but they've rarely recorded a concept album as enthralling as The Wake of Magellan. Employing a fictional character, Hector Del-Fuego Magellan, a supposed descendent of famed explorer Ferdinand Magellan, the band retells two true stories. The first is the tale of the Maersk Dubai, a Taiwanese freight ship whose captain, upon discovering three stowaways on board, decided to throw the offending passengers overboard. The second is the story of journalist Veronica Guerin, who died while combating drug pushers in her home country of Ireland. Magellan relates these two stories – some of the narrative is enhanced by an epic poem in the liner notes, which was written, along with the lyrics, by producer Paul O'Neill – over the course of the album. It's an ambitious effort, to say the least, but Savatage's surprisingly graceful music – not only does it fit the story line, but it has sweeping melodies, intricate arrangements and stunning solos that are compelling on their own terms – making it a fascinating voyage.

by Stephen Thomas Erlewine, AMG

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With the departure of Jon Oliva as lead vocalist (but not as keyboardist or writer) for Savatage, the band found a replacement in the former singer of Wicked Witch, Zachary Stevens. While Stevens did not have the emotional range that Oliva showed on Gutter Ballet and Streets, he had a less bombastic delivery that fit well with the new material that Paul O' Neill and the Oliva brothers and were writing. After moving towards progressive metal on the previous two albums, Edge of Thorns was a leaner, more understated guitar-driven record. The majority of the album consists of stripped-down metal anthems, recorded with less flashy guitar work and production than on previous records. The band continued to try out new sounds, however, using an electric sitar on "Degrees of Sanity" and recording their first acoustic ballad with "Sleep," which closes the album. Edge of Thorns also includes two short solo piano instrumentals adding a note of emotional depth most metal bands never explore. Among the highlights are the pounding "He Carves His Stone" and "Conversation Piece," with its lyrics about self-mutilation. The title track remains one of the band's finest moments, with a haunting piano phrase, a fierce guitar riff, and a strong lead vocal by Stevens. A true one-off in the Savatage canon, the tragic death of Criss Oliva following the release of Edge of Thorns ended up leading the band back to progressive metal.

by Geoff Orens, AMG

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Savatage - The Ultimate Box Set (2014) [14CD + DVD Limited Edition Box Set]

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Streets picked up where Gutter Ballet left off, taking Savatage's interest in progressive metal into a full-album concept. Based around a short story written by producer/songwriter Paul O' Neill, Streets is a diverse collection of songs about a lost soul trying to find himself in the New York City night. Although not based around real life events in the life of the band, it's obvious the group is quite attached to the material, turning out very emotional performances. Unlike many rock operas where the story suffers to further the music or vice versa, the band finds a nice compromise on Streets and is able to convey feelings of deep sorrow, elation, anger, and beauty, sometimes even on the same track. Opening with a snippet from Mozart's Magic Flute, the group quotes from a wide range of influences. "A Little Too Far" has a show tune quality to it, while the beautiful "Heal My Soul" takes its melody from an old Welsh lullaby. Both songs feature lead singer Jon Oliva alone with a piano. Savatage, who before Gutter Ballet had only written a handful of ballads, turns in several brilliant ones here, concluding with perhaps the band's greatest song, the dramatic and impassioned "Believe." That's not to say that there are not a fair share of rockers, as well. In fact, "Strange Reality," "Ghost in the Ruins," and "Jesus Saves" are among the leanest and most intense the band wrote, and Criss Oliva got more interesting as a guitar player with each successive album. While many metal guitarists seem only interested in technical displays, Oliva turns out material here that equals the heart-wrenching singing of his brother. Considering the intensity and beauty of the diverse material here, this is a fine place to start learning about this band.

by Geoff Orens, AMG

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Signing to Atlantic Records after The Dungeons Are Calling, Savatage seemed ready to break, and, for Power of the Night, the band stayed away from the fantasy lyrics of their past to focus on pieces that dealt with modern problems, anger, and sex. While they continued to produce some exciting metal here, such as with the title track and "Necrophilia," there was nothing on the same level as "The Dungeons Are Calling" or "I Believe." Part of the fault for that lies in the production, which took the guts out of the band's sound. But the attempt at a pop-metal single, "Hard for Love," and several unremarkable lustful rockers did not play to the band's strengths. Only "In the Dream," the first real power ballad the band performed, points in any new direction, managing to be moving instead of perfunctory like many metal ballads often are. Featuring a nice use of keyboards, it closes an average album with a fine touch.

by Geoff Orens, AMG

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Gutter Ballet marked the transition between Savatage's earlier, straightforward, fantasy-themed metal and the more progressive direction the band took in the 1990s. Co-writing all their new material with producer Paul O' Neill, the songwriting on Gutter Ballet is leaps and bounds ahead of almost anything the group had recorded before. The arrangements are more complex, with the band finding new depths within O'Neill's productions. On "Gutter Ballet" and "When the Crowds Are Gone," the addition of piano accentuates the songs' mournful sound. Both these pieces and "Summer's Rain" are light years away from Sirens or Dungeons Are Calling, featuring slower tempos, soaring guitars, and sophisticated, sensitive lyrics delivered touchingly by Jon Oliva. Criss Oliva's guitar playing has improved, as well, and his beautiful, acoustic instrumental, "Silk and Steel," is a highlight on the album. Despite the change in focus, the band did not give up their edge, but several of the rockers show a newfound maturity in subject matter. "Rage and War," "Mentally Yours," and "Thorazine Shuffle" all tackle serious topics with tight, dynamic playing. While there is some material here that is a throwback to earlier days – "She's in Love" is a sexually charged rocker while "The Unholy" and "Hounds" feature dark fantasy lyrics – thanks to interesting tempo changes and more complex production, the tracks sound more epic in scope than most of the group's previous work.

by Geoff Orens, AMG

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With Dead Winter Dead, Savatage returned to rock opera, a format the band had explored previously on Streets. However, with several lineup changes having taken place since that seminal 1991 album, the sound of Dead Winter Dead is quite different. On this album alone, the group have a new drummer in Jeff Platte and a new guitarist in Al Pitrelli. Chris Caffery, the guitarist who had briefly been in the band earlier, also returned to the group's lineup. Musically, Savatage have built upon the musical ground of Handful of Rain with grand but heavy arrangements of theatrical and complex pieces. Both "This Is the Time (1990)" and the closing ballad, "Not What You See," show the strong influence of musicals on the songwriters. Take away the heavy guitars and you have something that could appear in many a Broadway show. Built around a story that takes place during the Balkan War of the early 1990s, the music nicely captures the wide range of emotion that the narrative calls for. While Zachery Stevens provides the vocals for the majority of the album, songwriter and former lead singer Jon Oliva returns on the sinister "I Am," and the almost-rap "Doesn't Matter Anyway," which provides some straight-forward metal in between the more progressive pieces. The instrumentals, "Mozart and Madness" and "Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24)," are surprisingly well-arranged ominous metal versions of classical and traditional Christmas pieces, the latter of which would appear on the first Trans-Siberian Orchestra album.

by Geoff Orens, AMG

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Fight for the Rock was Savatage's blatant attempt at commercial success after being prodded in that direction by their record company. The result was an album that seemed like a pale imitation of Van Halen. Even the band have pretty much disowned this one. The title track is a decent enough metal anthem, but the mellow Badfinger cover, "Day After Day," is a definite mis-step, and "Out On Streets" sounded much better on the raw version that appeared on Sirens. The rest of the record is not as much bad as it is simply bland and uninspired arena metal with "She's Only Rock and Roll," being a low point, and the menacing "Hyde," standing out from among the rest a bit. The production is quite weak and even Criss Oliva's guitar, one of the staples of the Savatage sound, is not given much chance to shine here. The album did mark the debut of the band's new bassist, Johnny Lee Middleton, who would be the only member of the group to officially appear as a member on the rest of their work. Thankfully, the band would rethink their musical approach after this record.

by Geoff Orens, AMG

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With band members, critics, and fans unhappy with the commercialism of Fight for the Rock, Savatage began to disintegrate. However the new found acquaintance of producer Paul O'Neill not only changed the group's fortunes but soon pointed them in new directions. O'Neill, who was looking for a metal band to record some of his musical ideas, agreed to produce the group's next album, which became Hall of the Mountain King. A return to the form of Dungeons Are Calling, Hall of the Mountain King was the great album the band had always threatened to make. Featuring blistering guitar riffs, numerous tempo changes, and over-the-top screeching vocals, Savatage were finally captured by decent production after two albums of attempts to put a pop sheen on their music. Returning mostly to dark fantasy subject matter, "Devastation," "Legions," and the epic title track sounded more confident and tighter than anything on their previous two records, featuring dynamic rhythms courtesy of bassist Middleton and drummer Wacholz. The catchy pop-metal of "Strange Wings" was ironically a better song than any of the band's more blatant attempts at commercialism. Meanwhile, "24 Hours Ago," one of three tracks the group co-wrote with O'Neill, was an impressive opener with an interesting tempo changes and personal lyrics that pointed to the direction the band would soon take. Fans of the later, more progressive Savatage might not enjoy the group's earlier work, but this is a fine place to start looking.

by Geoff Orens, AMG

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Savatage - The Ultimate Box Set (2014) [14CD + DVD Limited Edition Box Set]

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Going through a lot of personnel changes can make a band's output very erratic – in the '80s and '90s, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath went through so many personnel changes that you never knew if a new album would be decent, mediocre or quite forgettable. But personnel changes haven't prevented Savatage from being impressively consistent. In 1993, Savatage suffered a cruel blow when guitarist and founding member Criss Oliva was killed in a car crash. But the band bounced back nicely with Handful of Rain, which was the first album it recorded after Criss' death and found him being replaced by former Testament guitarist Alex Skolnick. With a lineup consisting of Skolnick, singer Zachary Stevens, bassist Johnny Lee Middleton and drummer Steve Wacholz, Savatage delivers an album that is melodic, ambitious, often operatic and consistently absorbing. Jon Oliva, who had co-founded Savatage with brother Criss back in 1978, is listed as a co-producer and a keyboardist, but not as an actual member. The songs are dramatic, passionate and intense, but they're also quite melodic – in fact, melody and aggression are equally important on this excellent album. Appropriately, Savatage dedicated Handful of Rain to Criss' memory.

by Alex Henderson, AMG

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I can't be the only person that teared up a little when he realized there would be, at long last, a full-fledged live album featuring the late Criss Oliva of Savatage in his rightful spot on the lead guitar. The man was a major influence on my own playing from an early age, and to be perfectly blunt with you, the very idea of a Savatage without Criss performing, and without Jon handling vocals, is alien to me. Unnecessary, even. I mean no offense to the revolving door of musicians the bands used to fill in the blanks later in their career, but I've just never been able to get too into anything the band released after Gutter Ballet, so I was literally beaming with joy when this arrived in my clutches, and it's a real treat that this sounds as good as it does; one last hurrah with the wizard of the frets.

Ghost in the Ruins is not necessarily a 'proper' live outing, but a collection of cuts compiled from various gigs spanning the years 1987-1990, arguably the band's creative peak in terms of studio output. All of the performances are from here in the States, and it might have been slightly superior if they'd chosen to interject a few European festivals or tours just for variation, but in general the quality of the mix here is intense and vivid enough to carry a listener to those fateful, important years of their evolution. With Chris Caffery's rhythm guitar beneath Oliva's wilder lead tendencies, tunes like "City Beneath the Surface", "Of Rage and War" and "The Dungeons are Calling" sound tremendous. It's utterly fantastic that, even at this more 'rock opera' oriented stage (which would culminate with Streets and the later albums), the band was hammer out wonderful live interpretations of their pure metal roots, merging them into sets alongside the more delicate cuts like "When the Crowds are Gone" or "Gutter Ballet" itself. It's also impressive that, despite these being different gigs, the mastering keeps the varied levels relatively balanced so that it could almost pass for a single set on a single night of magic…

It's true that much of this material is drawn from Hall of the Mountain King and Gutter Ballet, with a few of the earliest tunes for good measure. I wouldn't have minded a few of my favorite numbers from Power of the Night making the selection, but then, that and its successor Fight for the Rock were divisive records, and I might have been alone in the majority for such a sentiment. Regardless, listening to Criss's leads here in "Legions", "24 Hours Ago" and "Hounds" alone would be worth the price of investment in this, and I'd rather experience this perpetually than suffer a family friendly Trans-Siberian Orchestra gig. The vocals have that classic balance of delicate, emotional resonance, grit and screaming, and the crowd response is good and loud without cutting into the instrumentation. Drums, bass, piano, everything is spot fucking on. I could live without the solo track (I rarely care for 80s guitar hero leads outside of the actual song context), and the 'post script' acoustic, but otherwise this is hands down one of the best live records from a classic US metal band of the 80s, whether you have to pay 10 or 20 or 50 dollars to track it down. In fact, even if it's not studio material and nothing new, it was the single most valuable Savatage record beyond 1989.

by autothrall, metal-archives.com

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Poets & Madmen, Savatage's 12th studio album and fourth concept album, finds the band continuing to write grand metal pieces with changing time signatures and effective transitions between quiet and loud sections. However, with the return of Jon Oliva as vocalist and the departure of guitarist Al Pitrelli, the band's sound continues to evolve and change. While the years have seen Oliva's vocal range decrease, his snarling style of talk-singing is thankfully still present and is reminiscent of his work with Doctor Butcher. With Chris Caffery, the sole guitarist in the band, the group sounds leaner and yet ironically heavier than on their previous records. Oliva's limited vocal range also has put the focus more on rhythm and churning guitar riffs than melody. However, that does not mean the vocal lines are dull. In the ten-minute "Morphine Child," massive vocal harmonies fuse together heavy metal and cabaret musical influences that take some of the experiments the group has done before to the next level. "The Rumor," meanwhile, features the most prominent use of acoustic guitar on a Savatage album for years and finds the band moving back and forth between folk and heavy metal. While "Man in the Mirror" and "Awaken" sound more like Streets-era Savatage, the closing ballad, "Back to Reason," admirably moves away from the admittedly moving but redundant power ballad formula the band had been repeating for quite some time.

by Geoff Orens, AMG

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Is this a must have for Savatage fans? Probably for the true junkie. The thing is, this is really nothing we don't already have. The only difference is the new version of "Jesus Saves" which is good, and it is great to hear any previously unreleased work from Savatage, but I do like the other version of "Jesus Saves" better. The other is a bonus track "Larry Elbows", which never made it on the original Streets album, but you can hear a much better version on Edge of Thorns, the track is "Follow Me". Larry Elbows, combines, Follow Me, with what sounds like a track from Jon Oliva's Pain, Global Warning disc, called "Look at the World". The song really doesn't work for me, but you can see how it fits the Streets album, but where does it belong. The final difference is, obviously, the Narration. The Narration has its moments, but really doesn't lend anything to the album and much of it is pointless, I mean there is an almost embarrassing lead in to "Ghost in the Ruins", "So D.T. just sat on a stoop and thought…how he watched all the other Ghosts in the Ruins". The back cover states to enjoy Streets the way it was meant to be heard. They really could have done a much better job with this, it seems rushed. I love the album, I love the story, any true Savatage fan has this and has read the liner notes and is fully on top of the story, this narration is pretty much a disappointment and unnecessary. With that said, this band is my all time favorite band and anything that comes along from Savatage always is exciting, and gives us hope that there may be more to come. Perhaps if the Trans-Siberian Orchestra ever falls apart there would be a Savatage re-union. One can always hope

By gmoney, amazon

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Savatage - The Ultimate Box Set (2014) [14CD + DVD Limited Edition Box Set]

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Savatage - The Ultimate Box Set (2014) [14CD + DVD Limited Edition Box Set]

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Savatage - The Ultimate Box Set (2014) [14CD + DVD Limited Edition Box Set]

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Savatage - The Ultimate Box Set (2014) [14CD + DVD Limited Edition Box Set]

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Savatage - The Ultimate Box Set (2014) [14CD + DVD Limited Edition Box Set]

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