Savatage - Music

Music

Savatage and its former variations started out as a heavy metal band, incorporating Jon Oliva's powerful, sometimes screamed vocals accompanied by Criss Oliva's heavy guitar riffs and fast, melodic solos. When bassist Johnny Lee Middleton joined in 1986, the band took a step in the direction of radio-friendly hardrock due to label pressure, but to no success.

In 1987 producer Paul O'Neill was brought in and added symphonic elements to the band's sound, making the album Hall of the Mountain King the band's first progressive metal album. Around this time vocalist Jon Oliva also started focusing more on keyboards and piano. The band's 1991 effort Streets: A Rock Opera was, as its name implies, a rock opera, the first of many to follow.

After the departure of lead vocalist Jon Oliva, his replacement Zachary Stevens brought in a very different vocal sound, as he is a tenor as opposed to Oliva being a baritone.
The band continued on the progressive metal/hard rock path, and when Jon Oliva re-joined the band, albums would often feature a few songs with him on lead vocals.

One of the band's trademarks, especially in the band's later years, were the canon and multi-backing vocals. In Savatage's early years guitarist Criss Oliva would sometimes provide backing vocals, but this decreased dramatically over the years so he could focus on guitar playing. The band's 1994 album Handful of Rain saw the introduction of canon vocals with the song "Chance", and the subsequent albums had some of these incorporated as well. In the studio, Stevens' vocals would be layered on top of each other, but live Jon Oliva, Chris Caffery, Al Pitrelli and Johnny Lee Middleton would all do the canon vocals.