Unknown Soldier

The Lowdown
Savatage were one of those mid-1980s metal entities that felt comfortable churning out a sound that had roots in thrash, speed and death metal, rather than in the traditional metal of many of their counterparts. But overall the band were demonstrating certain musical attributes that would go onto characterize power metal, making Savatage an innovative metal outfit for their time due to their contrast of certain styles. The debut album Sirens had been a dark but unbalanced affair, largely in that most of its best tracks had been pushed to the front of that album, giving it that top-heavy feel. The band then issued out one of their best releases in the thrash based EP The Dungeons Are Calling (highly recommended) and both these two releases are covered in my 1983 listing. By the time of the band’s actual second album Power of the Night, which has an album cover that often reminds me of the Legs Diamond album cover A Diamond is a Hard Rock (see that 1977 review) The band then landed a big league contract with Atlantic and soon had hot producer Max Norman on board after already having made his name as Ozzy Osbourne’s almost in-house producer and he would later go on to produce Megadeth in their most commercial period of the early 1990s. The word ‘commercial’ though is certainly the key word for this album and is probably the main point of contention concerning the album. As they had been signed up to a big label, Savatage were certainly pushed to produce something palatable for the metal market, as this is what was selling circa 1983-1986. For this exact reason the album often gets accused of sounding somewhat lifeless, as in the band has had the lifeforce sucked out of them, a similar observation I remember was made against Mudhoney many years later in the grunge explosion. Personally though I think that Power of the Night as an album has quite a bit to offer which is the reason why it’s here. The first thing on listening to this album as expected, is the cleaner production feel on the opening song and title track “Power of the Night” but the song soon gets down to typical Savatage business of mean sounding vocals and cool-ass guitar licks by brothers Jon and Criss Oliva. Ambitious tracks like “Warriors” pretty much work as well, largely again thanks to the smouldering guitar of Criss Oliva who drags everything along nicely. Songs like “Hard for Love” and “Skull Session” were two tracks due to their so-called sexual metaphors, that saw the album have a ‘Parental Advisory’ sticker attached to it. Final track “In a Dream” kind of reminds me of one of Alice Cooper’s 1970s rock opera type efforts, something of course that the band themselves would soon move towards. Admittedly there are a number of throwaway tracks on the album and when the songs don’t work musically, the cheesy lyrics of Jon Oliva seem even more exposed than normal but despite the basic feel of a lot of the songs, there’s a Savatage vibe that’s surely underpinned by bassist Keith Collins. Keyboards are used over the album to strong effect and really enhance a track like “Unusual” and overall the feel of the album is Savatage at a slower pace than their first two efforts, something that often gives proceedings a harder edged feel. Overall if you like high-pitched/mean sounding vocals, Judas Priest style riffarama and fantasy lyrics, despite the fact that the band had toned down the latter here and had gone in for modern issues this time around, Savatage are usually a rewarding brand of metal to consistently listen to with their pumping sound. Sure the sound is pretty commercial here and the songs are only there some of the time, but imo they do a better job than some of the bigger sellers of the year.

Jon Oliva- Vocals/Keyboards
Criss Oliva– Guitar
Keith Collins– Bass
Steve “Doc” Wacholz – Drums

Production- Max Norman

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