Criss Oliva

Criss Oliva was Savatage's founding guitarist and the architect of its instrumental language. Born in 1963, he formed the band in Florida with his older brother, Jon Oliva, and remained until his death in 1993. His style combines weight with a melodic sense of classical origin. The riffs of Hall of the Mountain King (1987) — an album whose title and theme come from Edvard Grieg's piece, quoted explicitly in the title track — show the method: harmonic structure conceived as composition rather than as a sequence of chords, executed with heavy tone and firm attack. It is what allowed Savatage to migrate from straightforward heavy metal to the rock opera of Gutter Ballet (1989) and Streets (1991) without losing its identity: his guitar kept pace with the ambition of the writing. He died on 17 October 1993, aged thirty, when the car he was travelling in was struck by a drunk driver who crossed into the oncoming lane on a Florida highway. His wife, who was driving, survived with serious injuries. The band nearly ended there. Jon Oliva took years to resume full activity, and the next album, Handful of Rain (1994), was recorded practically by him alone. Criss's name remains attached to Savatage as the element the band never truly replaced.