Author: Peter Podbrežnik
Artist: Savatage
Label: Atlantic Records
Release: 1987
Length: 40:07
Rating: 4/5
“Hall Of The Mountain King” is easily the most important album in the story of American melodic heavy metallers Savatage. After the below-average “Fight For The Rock” (1986), Savatage were in a truly unenviable spot. Their label at the time was already threatening to show them the door, while some of their fans, after a brief flirtation with melodic rock, had started to drift away. The brothers Jon and Criss Oliva were completely lost back then and couldn’t see a way out. Just as they were starting to think about breaking up the band, they bumped into someone by pure chance who didn’t just save their career, but helped them discover some entirely new musical dimensions and become even better musicians and songwriters.
The savior’s name was Paul O’Neill. The spiritually minded O’Neill, who by then already had plenty of experience from working with some of the big names in rock, became not only their main producer but also a major factor in writing increasingly better material. With his ideas and solid musical education, especially in classical music, he had a huge influence on the progressive development of the Oliva brothers’ songwriting style. O’Neill successfully pushed them to seriously widen their musical horizons while this album was coming together. Jon finally discovered an additional calling as a pianist, and symphonic arrangements suddenly began to play an ever bigger role in their music.
On “Hall Of The Mountain King,” Savatage started shedding their skin, going from an obscure, rebellious-spirited heavy metal outfit to masters of their own brand of symphonic-tinged progressive metal with deeper, life-sized messages. What’s most interesting is that, despite the greater integration of piano and symphonic arrangements, their sound on certain tracks also got heavier than ever. The masterful O’Neill production helped a lot here, and it’s a big reason the band rose from the ashes.
That Savatage didn’t just make a grand return to their uncompromising heavy metal home turf with this album but outgrew everything they’d done before is proven right away by the opening cataclysm “24 Hours Ago.” This heavy metal classic serves up all the essential ingredients of true Sava chemistry: Criss’s sawing guitar riffing, Jon’s maniacal shrieking, Wacholz’s demolition-crew drumming and Middleton’s striking climbs up the bass fretboard.
“Beyond The Doors Of The Dark” also deserves a special mention, with their trademark drama woven through venomous riffing and Jon’s unique, unusually high vocal lines. The phantasmagorical “Strange Wings” is a chapter of its own, with its striking guitar riff and a fantastic vocal performance from Jon. While he dazzles with his bravura climbs into the high register over Criss’s strafing riffing, Wacholz’s killer drum fills roam in between. The end result is an incredibly mystical, epic atmosphere that would follow them more and more through the rest of their career.
With “Prelude To Madness,” the intro to the album’s centerpiece, Savatage began exploring their classical and progressive rock tendencies on a wide scale for the first time, tendencies that would only intensify on their future releases. At its core it’s a great reworking of the central arrangement from the famous “In the Hall of the Mountain King” from Grieg’s Peer Gynt suite, where Criss’s classically minded guitar passages and Jon’s moves on the piano stand in for the orchestra. It flows straight into “Hall Of The Mountain King,” the album’s centerpiece and another Sava classic, where Jon reigns supreme with his monumental vocal performances. They radiate a downright mix of madness and fanaticism that only he can pull off. Meanwhile, Criss delivers a few more utterly unique riffs that earned him a lasting place among the most respected metal guitarists of all time. “Hall Of The Mountain King” is rightfully one of their best-known and best-loved pieces, and it’s what earned Jon his famous nickname, “Mountain King.”
The album isn’t without a few somewhat weaker moments, like “Legions” and “White Witch,” where they show off the more straightforward heavy metal style that dominated their first three albums. They’re only weak, of course, when measured against the Sava classics around them.
On “Hall Of The Mountain King,” Savatage finally began to live up to their potential and gradually shape their signature symphonic, operatic-flavored sound, the one that would deliver their best work in the ’90s. After this album, an interesting but obscure heavy metal band that was still finding its style, and that various calculating music-industry types had been jerking around for a quick buck, turned into a band with heart, a vision of its own and an appetite for breaking through to the very top of the metal world. On the tour where 20-year-old Chris Caffery joined them as rhythm guitarist for the first time (he’d later become an important member of the band), they played alongside Dio and Megadeth. Ronnie James Dio prophetically told Jon back then that if he kept singing in that style, he’d simply lose his voice. His ominous prophecy came true (temporarily) a few years later.
Lineup
Jon Oliva – vocals, piano
Criss Oliva – guitar
Johnny Lee Middleton – bass, backing vocals
Steve Wacholz – drums, percussion
GUEST MUSICIAN:
Robert Kinkel – keyboards
Production
Paul O’Neill
Tracklist
1. 24 Hours Ago (4:54)
2. Beyond The Doors Of The Dark (5:08)
3. Legions (4:50)
4. Strange Wings (3:45)
5. Prelude To Madness (Instrumental) (3:13)
6. Hall Of The Mountain King (5:32)
7. The Price You Pay (3:51)
8. White Witch (3:21)
9. Last Dawn (Instrumental) (1:07)
10. Devastation (3:48)
