Savatage: Sirens

Limited vinyl LP pressing. Raw talent and power on display: Savatage’s first album. Mastered for vinyl and reissued with the original 1983 design, including new extensive liner notes by Clay Marshall.

Quite simply, this pisses all over 99% of other metal albums from 1983 and, yes, I’m including most of those ones you just thought of. ‘Sirens’ is a remarkably strong album with a few minor weaknesses and has stood the test of time incredibly well, maintaining an enormously punchy sound and more than a few unique idiosyncracies. Though arguably not the band’s finest effort (that prize may go to ‘Hall of the Mountain King’), any fan of classic, power, speed, or thrash metal needs to listen to this and acknowledge the oft-neglected role that Savatage had in forming, progressing, and perhaps even perfecting those genres.

Considering that the songs on ‘Sirens’ aren’t that long and that there are only 9 of them, they need to contain something pretty damn special to match up to the hype I’ve just provided. If you listen to this album, I’m not sure what you’re going to pay attention to first, which is always a good sign. There are incredible performances on all four instruments here, all of which take a suitable position in the mix without drowning out any of the other members’ contributions. The drums lack an ounce of sharpness, though Steve Macholz makes up for it with a livewire performance, sounding like the bastard child of Keith Moon and Dave Lombardo, upon the condition that one could be a woman. There is something rock ‘n’ rollish about the relentlessly pounding beats in the faster numbers like ‘Rage’, yet there is every bit as much precision and extremity as the other big guns of ’83 when ‘I Believe’ hots up and the double kicks and rapid fills rain fire down on everything. Keith Collins also turns in a remarkable bass spot, with a glorious sound and a lot of complicated supporting work, but the focus must be on the Oliva brothers, who steal every song and smash all of the other early 80s vocal/guitar duos, hands down.

The power of the bass might be considered helpful with only one guitar, though it seems almost superfluous when one hears the staggeringly huge tone that Criss Oliva generates, not to mention the riffs (always simple, always effective) that just keep coming and coming until the closing ballad. The solos are out of this world too and don’t borrow from any of the expected sources (I hear more Scorpions than Iron Maiden or Judas Priest), crossing a bridge between the 70s and the future with no stops in between and no regard to the other travellers on the same journey. Jon Oliva, on the other hand, has one of those vocal performances that just seems to rise from the smoke and debris that the other musicians are creating around him and seize control of the wasteland. The power and authority that exudes from his movements on ‘Living for the Night’, the hope and timelessness of his storytelling on ‘I Believe’, and the pure lunacy in the closing section of the title track are all indicators that he was either impossibly high or supremely confident to attempt such feats of skill and personality and, considering that he barely puts a foot wrong, we should probably discount the drugs. His single greatest moment (and surely the most memorable touch of the album) is the end of ‘Sirens’, when Criss’s starkly lurching riff returns and his brother squawks out a series of chilling cries that come close to the intoxication and terror that the singing of the mythical creatures create.

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