For this week’s open mic session, I covered a song by one of my favorite bands: Savatage. As I did in my previous ”Awesome Music” post with Symphony X, I now want to introduce this heavily underrated band and feature some of their songs and albums – totally biased of course. As there is so much to tell, I will break it down into several posts.

Here is how it all started. I stumbled over Savatage when I was at the Wacken festival in Germany in 1998. I heard a lot of praise about the band but never got to listen to them. So, I decided to give them a chance and that changed my life forever… their live performance with their awesome musicianship combined with epic songwriting brought tears to my eyes. And I was not the only one at that festival: Grown up men falling into each other’s arms while singing their tunes - very bizarre indeed!
It was clear to me that I needed to dive into their discography. I started with their current album at that time: The Wake of Magellan.

The Wake of Magellan

The title track immediately blew me away. I was overwhelmed by the sheer musicality in this song: A laid back verse explodes into a epic chorus with great orchestration. But there was more. The song reaches its climax in the counterpoint vocals at the end where 4 different vocal lines (plus harmonies!) are getting layered successively on top of each other. In the clip, it starts at 3:39 but I recommend to listen to the whole song to get the full experience. Best with good headphones - have fun discovering the voices in the panorama! 😉

1:
Don't see the storms are forming
Don't see or heed the warning
Don't hear the sound of tyrants
Surrounded by the silence
2:
Columbus and Magellan and De Gama sailed upon the ocean
In a world of ignorance with thoughts so primitive
That men were killed with no more will than that they simply had the notion
But in this world of heartless men this thing they never did
3:
Don't hear it, don't hear it
Don't hear it, don't hear it
Don't hear it, don't hear it
Don't hear it, don't hear it
4:
Got to keep it underground
If they find it kill it blind it
Got to keep it underground
If they find it kill it blind it

I was aware that such musical stylistic devices can mainly be found in musicals and opera, but never heard a rock band pushing the boundaries so far. This song is and will always be one of my all-time faves!

There is another epic track on the album called “The Hourglass”. When I listen to this song, I have this perfect picture in my mind of the ship caught in the middle of the storm getting hit by gigantic waves. There is also an amazing counterpart at the end of the song.

The whole album is a concept album about an old Spanish sailor, who has decided to end his life by sailing his small boat out into the Atlantic until it sinks. Various events are incorporated into the story like the Maersk Dubai incident, when the captain of a freighter threw stowaways overboard in the middle of the Atlantic or the death of Irish reporter Veronica Guerin, who died fighting the drug trade in her country.

So this album was my introduction to Savatage. And I was hungry for more – especially their mind-blowing vocal counterparts. Let’s go back one album to find out more!

Dead Winter Dead

Like “The Wake of Magellan”, the album “Dead Winter Dead” is also a concept album. It tells the story of a Serb boy and Muslim girl in Sarajevo during the time of the Bosnian war. On Christmas eve, they both listen from different ends of the battlefield to a Cello player, who decided to ignore the on-going battles and plays Christmas carols in the middle of the old town square. When the music abruptly stops, they both start to make their ways across no man's land toward the town square. Arriving at exactly the same moment, they see one another. Instinctively realizing that they are both there for the same reason, they do not start to fight, but instead, together walk slowly to the fountain. There they find the old man lying dead in the snow, his face covered with blood, his cello lying smashed and broken at his side.
This is perfectly captured in one of the best instrumentals of all time (according to my opinion): Christmas Eve Sarajevo. This tune paved the way for the multi-platinum selling Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

And finally, they decide to run away together and leave the madness of war behind – beautifully realized in the tune “Not what you see”. Again with a counterpart (1:44) that brings tears to my eyes:

1:
Can you live your life in a day, putting every moment in play?
Never hear a word that they say as the wheels go around
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
2:
I've been waiting
I don't understand what you want me to be
It's the dark you're hating
It's not who I am, but it is what you see
3:
Tell me would you really want to
See me leave this night without you
Would you ever look about you
Wondering where we might be
New York is so far away now
Tokyo, Berlin and Moscow
Only dreams from here but somehow
One day that world we will see
4:
I don't understand…

So I guess, I'll leave it for now - there is simply too much epicness still to come. It might blow up this post... ;)