It's weird with Savs...they are a band I have to be in the mood for. And I find myself not wanting to listen to Oliva-fronted Savatage and Stevens-fronted Savatage together. It's either one or the other, depending on mood. They are just so different to my ears that it has to be mood driven. I just don't put on their albums and kick back. I have to wait for the mood to strike, and even then, figure out which one I prefer that day.
I can understand that. Savatage went through such a dramatic evolution in their sound that different periods of their discography sound as if they were made by completely different bands. To the uninitiated, it would be completely understandable to think that records like
Sirens or
The Dungeons Are Calling were not made by the same guys who crafted
Dead Winter Dead or
The Wake of Magellan. When I am in the mood for
Edge of Thorns, I am far more likely to have the desire to listen to any given TSO album then, say,
Power of the Night.
Of course, there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for that. In a very real sense, the band that made
Dead Winter Dead and
The Wake of Magellan was
not the same band that made
Sirens or
The Dungeons Are Calling. Savatage's lineup changed just as frequently as their musical style, and the constantly rotating membership doubtlessly had a major hand in their creative direction. Even the role of Jon Oliva, the only guy to be present in every incarnation of the band, was in a constant state of flux throughout the 20 years of Savatage's history, as he transitioned from being a front-man to a keyboardist/composer/co-producer.
Perhaps because of all this, I don't really divide Savatage's career based on who was in the band at any given time, even less so on who was singing on what particular record. Two of the "Zak albums" (
Dead Winter Dead and
The Wake of Magellan) have tracks with Jon on lead vocals. Jon sang on all of
Poets and Madmen but half the record was originally written for Zak's voice, and the music as a whole has more in common with the Zak era of the band then the earlier Oliva fronted period of Savatage. Much of
Edge of Thorns and
Handful of Rain were written for Jon's voice, but both albums were sung entirely by Zak. The later albums from the Jon Oliva era, like
Streets and
Gutter ballet arguably show stronger musical continuity with the rock opera style of the Zak era then with the classic metal style of the earlier Oliva-fronted albums. And sometimes the band credited on an album is not who actually played on that album, as is the case with
Handful of Rain.
For me personally, I think Savatage's career is better defined by who
wrote which particular records rather then who performed on them. In that case, the Savatage discography can be divided rather neatly into three different eras:
The Jon Oliva/Criss Oliva period-
Sirens, The Dungeons Are Calling, Power of the Night and
Fight for the Rock. All of these records are more or less classic 80's style metal albums, though
Fight for the Rock does flirt a bit with a more mainstream direction.
The Jon Oliva/Criss Oliva/Paul O'Neill period-
Hall of the Mountain King, Gutter Ballet, Streets and
Edge of Thorns. Over the course of these four records, Savatage transformed itself by incorporating progressive, classical and Broadway elements into their music, while still retaining much 80's metal bite in their sound, mostly thanks to Criss Oliva's excellent riffs and solos.
The Jon Oliva/Paul O'Neill period-
Handful of Rain, Dead Winter Dead, The Wake of Magellan and
Poets and Madmen. With Criss gone, the songwriting evolved to become almost completely dominated by the vocal and orchestral elements of Savatage. While the classic metal element of the band is still present here, the guitar, bass and drums largely serve to add some metal "omph" to the music rather then being the foundation of the songwriting itself, as had been the case in the past.
Admittedly, this periodization is not perfect. It can be argued that
Hall of the Mountain King has more in common with the classic metal albums that preceded it then with records like
Streets or
Edge of Thorns, albums that strongly foreshadow the direction of later era Savatage, as well as TSO. Likewise
Poets and Madmen is noticeably more guitar driven then the albums that had immediately come before, largely thanks to Chris Caffery's heavy involvement in the songwriting, and combined with Jon's return as lead vocalist, can be reasonably considered a return to the
Gutter Ballet and
Streets period of the band. But by and large, I feel the overall sound of Savatage was more strongly defined in any given period by the songwriting, rather then by the lineup.