The Most Important Album You've Never Heard About

October 24 was the 15th anniversary of the release of Dead Winter Dead by Savatage. I meant to write about it then, but with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra coming to Austin this week, it is still timely to write about The Most Important Album You've Never Heard About (at least if you are a TSO fan).

Dead Winter Dead is the most influential rock opera written about the Bosnian War. That doesn't say much because as far as I know, it's the ONLY rock opera written about the Bosnian War. However, this epic tragedy led to the formation of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. TSO has become one of the biggest touring acts ever, spreading holiday cheer and bringing classical music to the masses.

A Little History

Savatage was a high concept heavy metal band from Florida which released seventeen albums from 1983 to 2001. Their most popular album Poets and Madmen debuted at #7 on the German charts. However, their highest placement on the Billboard Charts was #116 for Hall of the Mountain King. Two of their albums, Streets and Dead Winter Dead, took the form of rock operas, and there are plans to make a Broadway musical out of Gutter Ballet.

Here is what Savatage looked and sounded like in 1996.

Dead Winter Dead

Dead Winter Dead was released on October 24, 1995. It is the story of a Serb boy and a Muslim girl who fall in love during the Bosnian War. It marked Al Pitrelli's debut as lead guitarist. Pitrelli had previously been a member of Alice Cooper's touring band and is now a member of the TSO West touring company. Dead Winter Dead was not one of Savatage's most successful albums. It did not crack the Billboard Top 200 and only made it to #80 in Germany and #68 in Japan. However, I will make the case that it was much more important than its sales would suggest.

The album's thirteen tracks tell the following story:

In the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, there is a town square surrounded by buildings that were constructed during the middle ages. The square has a beautiful stone fountain at its center and at one corner there is a thousand year old church with a gargoyle carved into its belfry. Now this gargoyle, for the last thousand years, has spent all his time trying to comprehend the human emotions of laughter and sorrow. But even after a millennium of contemplation, these most curious of human attributes remain a total mystery to our stone friend. (Sarajevo).

Our story begins in the year of 1990; the Berlin Wall has just fallen, communism has collapsed and for the first time since the Roman Empire, Yugoslavia finds itself a free nation. Serdjan Aleskovic cannot believe his good fortune to be alive and young at such a moment. The future and the happiness of all seem assured in what must surely be "the best of times". (This Is The Time).

However, even as Serdjan celebrates with his fellow countrymen, there are little men with little minds who are already busy sowing the seeds of hate between neighbors. (I Am) Young and impressionable Serdjan joins some of his friends in a Serbian Militia Unit and eventually finds himself in the hills outside of Sarajevo firing mortar shells nightly into the city. (Starlight). Meanwhile in Sarajevo itself, Katrina Brasic, a young Muslim girl, finds herself buying weapons from a group of arms merchants and then joining her comrades firing into the hills around the city. (Doesn't Matter Anyway).

The years pass by and it is now late November 1994. An old man who had left Yugoslavia many decades before, has now returned to the city of his birth, only to find it in ruins. As the season's first snowfall begins, he stands in the town square, looks toward the heavens and explains that when the Yugoslavians prayed for change, this is not what they intended. (This Isn't What We Meant).

As the old man finishes his prayer, the sun begins to set and the first shells of the evening's artillery barrage are starting to arc overhead. But instead of heading for the shelters with the rest of the civilians, he climbs atop the rubble that used to be the fountain and taking out his cello, starts to play Mozart as the shells explode around him. From this night forward he would repeat this ritual every evening. And every evening Serdjan and Katrina each find themselves listening to the thoughts of Mozart and Beethoven as the drift between the explosions across no man's land. (Mozart and Madness).

Though the winter does its best to cover the landscape with a blanket of temporary innocence, the war only escalates in violence and brutality. (Dead Winter Dead). One day in late December, Serdjan, on a patrol in Sarajevo, comes across a schoolyard where a recent exploding shell has left the ground littered with the bodies of young children. It is one thing to drop shells into a mortar and quite another to see where they land. Long after Serdjan returns to his own lines, he cannot get the faces of the children out of his mind. Realizing that what he has been participating in is not the glorious nation building that their leaders had described, but rather a path to mutual oblivion, he decides right then and there that he can no longer be a part of this, that you cannot build a future on the bodies of others. (One Child). At the first opportunity, he resolves that he will desert.

Sitting in his bunker on December 24th, he listens to the sounds of Christmas carols from the old cello player mingling with the sounds of war. Katrina, on the other side of the battlefield, is also listening. (Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24). It had just stopped snowing and the clouds had given way to reveal a beautiful star-filled sky when suddenly the cellos player's music abruptly ceases. Fearing the worst, Serdjan and Katrina both do something quite foolish and from their respective sides, start to make their way across no man's land toward the town square. Arriving at the exact same moment, they see one another. Instinctively realizing that they are both there for the same reason, they do not start to fight, but instead, together walk slowly to the fountain. There they find the old man lying dead in the snow, his face covered with blood, his cello lying smashed and broken at his side.

Then without warning, a single drop of liquid falls from out of the cloudless sky, wiping some of the blood off the old man's cheek. Serdjan looks up, but he can see nothing except the stone gargoyle high up on the church belfry. Overcome by what he has seen this night, he decides that he must leave this war immediately. Turning to the Muslim girl, he asks her to come with him, but now all she sees is his Serbian uniform. Pouring out his feelings, he explains that he is not what she thinks that he is. (Not What You See). Eventually winning her to his side, they leave the night together.

Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24 and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra

The story is a curious mix of tragedy and hope. One of the tracks, "Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24) became a breakout radio hit for Savatage. The song is a an instrumental mix of "The Carol of the Bells" and "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen." Given the warlike theme of the rock opera, it takes on a very martial air. In the story, it is a real downer, ending with a dead cellist. However, in an ironic twist, it became a radio hit as a hard rocking Christmas carol.

This inspired the members of Savatage to pursue the Christmas concept further. They formed the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and released Christmas Eve and Other Stories in 1996. TSO re-recorded "Christmas Eve" and produced the following video:

While the video keeps the tone of the music, it transforms the story into one about a little girl and the wonder of Christmas.

The track "Mozart & Memories," which features the opening theme of Mozart's Symphony No. 25 was also re-recorded by TSO and included in their 2009 release Night Castle.

Lyrics

Dead Winter Dead is also memorable for its lyrics. Here are a few of my favorites:

But this is the time
And this is the place
And these are the signs
That we must embrace

The moment is now
In all history
The time has arrived
This is the one place to be

These lyrics from "This is the Time (1990)" carries a bold optimism about the future. However, that optimism is perverted by greed.

I see a little man thinking
That he might need more
And so his eyes are drifting
To the house next door
And he wonders if his neighbours
Might be leaving

So he makes a little offer
That they'll understand
There is no point in letting
Things get out of hand
For no one wants to see
Their widows grieving

These lyrics from "I Am" capture the lust of coveting that is as old as King David and as timely as the clashes between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq. The story goes from optimism to greed to sorrow.

We dared to ask for more
But that was long before
The nights began to burn
You would have thought we'd
Learned you can't make promises
All based upon tomorrow
Happiness, security
Are words we only borrow

For is this the answer to our prayers
Is this what God has sent

The future couldn't last
We've nailed it to the past
With every word a trap
That no one can take

Back from all the architects
Who find their towers leaning
And every prayer we pray at night
Has somehow lost its meaning

For is this the answer to our prayers
Is this what God has sent

Please understand this isn't what we meant

This plaintive lament of "this isn't what we meant" fits in well with the disillusionment of the story's partisans. However, in a larger sense, it captures the cry of those whose pride has come before a fall, the realization that our schemes can take on a life beyond our control. I especially like the way the song is designed as a prayer to God that "this isn't what we meant."

Why Dead Winter Dead Matters

Dead Winter Dead is a great piece of musical story-telling and I return to it again and again. However, it's larger significance is that it paved the way for my favorite band, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.