Savatage

Savatage were formed in Tarpon Springs, Florida, in 1978 by brothers Jon Oliva (vocals, keyboards) and Criss Oliva (guitar), who played the Tampa Bay club circuit as Avatar before adopting the name Savatage ahead of their 1983 debut, Sirens. Backed by bassist Keith Collins and drummer Steve Wacholz, the early band dealt in raw, high-velocity heavy metal: Sirens and the 1984 EP The Dungeons Are Calling became underground touchstones, built on Jon's air-raid shriek and Criss's ferocious, blues-inflected riffing. A major-label move to Atlantic brought Power of the Night (1985) and the label-pressured, commercially aimed Fight for the Rock (1986), still the most disowned record in their catalogue. The turning point was producer Paul O'Neill, who joined for Hall of the Mountain King (1987) and stayed for the rest of the band's life. O'Neill pushed the Olivas toward theatricality, classical motifs and narrative songwriting; the title track's Grieg quotation announced the new direction. Gutter Ballet (1989) added piano, orchestration and Broadway-scale drama, and Streets: A Rock Opera (1991) went all the way — a full concept album about a fallen rock star's descent and redemption, now regarded as their masterpiece and a foundational progressive-metal record. Jon stepped back from lead vocals for Edge of Thorns (1993), handing the microphone to Zachary Stevens, whose cleaner, more melodic voice broadened the band's reach. Months after its release, on 17 October 1993, Criss Oliva was killed when a drunk driver struck his car head-on. He was 30. The loss nearly ended Savatage; Jon considered dissolving the band entirely before deciding to continue as a memorial to his brother, with Alex Skolnick and later Chris Caffery and Al Pitrelli filling the guitar role. Handful of Rain (1994) was largely Jon's own work, recorded in grief. Dead Winter Dead (1995), a concept album set during the Bosnian War, produced the instrumental "Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24" — a Carol of the Bells arrangement over metal guitars that became an unexpected radio hit. O'Neill, Jon Oliva and Robert Kinkel built an entire project around that formula: Trans-Siberian Orchestra, whose 1996 debut re-recorded the track and grew into an arena-filling seasonal institution. Savatage delivered two more studio albums, The Wake of Magellan (1997) and Poets and Madmen (2001, with Jon back on vocals), before touring ceased in 2002. TSO's success effectively absorbed the personnel and the calendar, leaving Savatage dormant for two decades apart from a 2015 Wacken reunion, with a long-promised comeback album still pending.