Savatage – Madness Reigns From The Gutter (1990)

Here is something you don’t want to hear about live albums: most of them are excuses. An obligation in contractual form with false applause and crowd noises, released between studio albums to give the label something to put on the shelf while the band disputes publishing in the parking lot of a Florida arena. They exist the way timeshares exist – something smarter convinced the weaker one that they were worth purchasing.

Madness Reigns from the Gutter is not one of those. Honestly, it’s kind of offensive how quickly it eliminates my main issue with live albums, making me look ridiculous as soon as I begin.

This is Savatage at the Palace of Hollywood, June 29, 1990, on the Rulin’ Gutter tour. It remained untouched in a vault for thirty-six years. For perspective, the children born the day the concert happened now have mortgages, divorces, and complicated relationships with their fathers. The Soviet Union is gone. Grunge appeared, became embarrassing, nostalgic, and embarrassing again. And here Savatage kept this recording, waiting presumably for the metal community to run out of things to complain about.

Timing-wise, they couldn’t have chosen better.

In 1990, Savatage was experiencing an identity crisis, and that’s the most amazing thing about them that I could ever say about a band. Gutter Ballet was released in late 1989 and left everyone with one hell of a headache that resulted in a beautiful mess, because Paul O’Neill took the neoclassical tendencies in the band to another level in Hall of the Mountain King, which meant that their next step was clearly Andrew Lloyd Webber on Judas Priest. They hadn’t fully committed to this idea yet, which created this fantastic tension where it wasn’t clear what was dominating the track – piano or power chords, both of them equally well-written.

In 1990, when the rest of Florida’s metal bands tried their best to be the most extreme, Savatage turned out the opposite. When asked what they thought about death metal, they suggested Broadway instead. That’s the best and craziest thing anyone could possibly do, and I love them for this.

First, what you need to understand before listening to this is the tragic personal story that turned this record into something bigger than the archive material. Criss Oliva – the lead guitarist and riff architect, the one who played those songs and carried that tension from the band’s brutal roots to their future grandeur – passed away in October 1993, murdered by a drunken driver. He was only 30 years old then. Oliva was described in the press as the guitar player whose style combined Randy Rhoads’, Eddie Van Halen’s, and Michael Schenker’s, but the real comparison should have been something else. Three songs from this exact concert have later been used in the tribute album Ghost in the Ruins, while the rest of the show remained unpublished.

So what you’re listening to on this ‘Madness Reigns’ is the final part of Criss Oliva’s legacy. And no, that’s not a marketing angle; that’s an emotional impact backed by thirty-six years of waiting.

‘City Beneath the Surface’ opens the show and immediately tells you to get ready, as you’re gonna need it. Jon Oliva’s voice is powerful and energetic from the first second and keeps going, delivering that manic performance that was his signature and made him one of the unique frontmen of American metal. Those who claim that he only shrieks are the ones who think Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings are just busy. Not that they are wrong per se, but that’s missing the whole point.

‘White Witch’ and ‘Of Rage and War’ follow, and it’s in this part that we see how live recording reveals an additional layer of the music we can’t perceive in the studio version. While the riff architecture of the latter is already impressive in the studio version, the performance live is just mind-blowing, especially with the groove that Johnny Lee Middleton provides, complementing Criss Oliva’s playing in the best possible way. As we know by now, these guys didn’t treat rhythm section work as anything less than combat.

‘She’s In Love’ becomes the first song that gives in to ease of listening, in other words, the first song that wants to break your heart rather than the structure of your brain cells. The solo in the studio version was already over the top in terms of complexity, but live it becomes even more impressive because it’s clear that Criss knows exactly what he wants to do and isn’t trying to show us his skills.

The mid-set consists of Mentally Yours, 24 Hrs. Ago, Legions, and Strange Wings, and this is what Madness Reigns does best. These are songs that, while not being acknowledged as the crown jewels of the Savatage catalogue, turn into the most fascinating demonstrations of how they managed to control their insane power in order not to overload their listeners’ brains with too many musical notes per second. In this case, dynamic becomes the point, and you can’t have an explosion without pressure.

Hounds becomes a statement. Despite having to be recorded live, it still manages to maintain the sinister aura it got in the studio. While playing this song, Steve “Doc” Wacholz, who played behind the enormous triple bass drum set, seems to be fighting with the concept of restraint, and he definitely wins this battle.

Finally, ‘Temptation Revelation’ becomes a show in and of itself, demonstrating Criss Oliva’s abilities in writing compositions and guitar playing. It’s as complex as it can be, with solos that demonstrate everything – from aggressive technique to delicate melodic phrase – sometimes at once. The guy knows what he has, but doesn’t rush to reveal it. It’s like he knows how much he can give and chooses to do that gradually, but somehow, this is the most overwhelming technique that can possibly exist.

‘When the Crowds Are Gone’ becomes the highlight of the set, simply because it needs to be played live. Being one of three songs published on the tribute album, this track has been heard by hardcore fans for over three decades, with others not knowing about the existence of this recording until now. Now, having it within the context of the rest of the show, we hear it from another perspective – that of two thousand people who share the loneliness and vulnerability expressed in Jon Oliva’s vocals in this song. Jon had figured out back in 1990 what few songwriters understand – that vulnerability presented in a strong and convincing way turns into power.

‘Dungeons Are Calling,’ ‘Sirens,’ and ‘Power of the Night’ bring us back to the vintage stuff, making us remember where the band originally came from, how it developed, and why they chose this particular path. In 1990, when these songs had aged into classicism, the band played them like they were still fresh, and that is the most important thing – they weren’t treating these as the songs they had written before, but rather the ones they continue to write, to perform, and develop further.

‘Hall of the Mountain King’ brings the set to its climax, making us fully comprehend the reason why this band was beloved so much by the community – the atmosphere of madness, energy, and power, all brought to life thanks to Jon Oliva’s piano and Criss Oliva’s guitar. There were few songs that defeated criticism simply by being so alive that you couldn’t think of something analytical to say about it. And this song is one of them.

‘Gutter Ballet’ follows and does what it always does – Jon’s piano invites, and then Criss’s guitar blows it to pieces and creates new life. It’s as beautiful as it’s complicated, and this song defines the relationship within the band and its core. Brothers who pulled in different directions, creating something impossible – the tension between brutality and grandeur – and giving birth to something new – the masterpiece that combines the two concepts into a single whole. ‘Gutter Ballet’ is a six-minute power ballad performed by Savatage in the way only they can perform it.

‘Thorazine Shuffle’ and ‘Devastation’ end the set, reminding us again that despite all the theatrical ambitions, symphony, and development, the band can still kick ass and tear down the walls, leaving the audience literally devastated. ‘Thorazine Shuffle’ is a truly unhinged live performance of an asylum-asylum metaphor, and Devastation becomes exactly what it suggests. The crowd on this June night left appropriately devastated.

There’s one thing to pay attention to regarding the production of this album – it sounds real, and this is incredibly rare these days. Whoever decided to do the restoration clearly understood that this was the job of an archaeologist rather than an architect – this is not the time to renovate. Crowd noises don’t overpower everything, instruments sound natural and free, and Jon Oliva’s voice is recorded perfectly, giving us the sense of being present there at that particular time. There’s some electricity in the air during this show, which is easily heard when you listen to Jon’s performance of his band’s songs, and when you listen to what Jon himself says about this show later – according to him, it was among the best performances by Savatage, and he was truly on fire.

The standard question critics tend to ask about an album is whether it adds anything we didn’t know before. The answer here is definitely yes – not because it confirms anything we believed about the 1990 lineup, but because it proves the facts. You may have believed them for the sake of fan mentality, but it doesn’t make you wrong – now you know this is reality. Criss Oliva, at 26 plays the guitar in a virtuosic manner that treats technical skills as a minimum, while Jon conducts madness, and a Los Angeles crowd is left in awe. They have spent over three decades trying to describe what they have just witnessed.

Thirty-six years is quite a long period of time to wait, but considering what happened in the meantime, this album becomes the gift that’s late but deserves to be appreciated. Here we finally have the documentation of one of their peak moments, something that was worth waiting for – it was too good to come earlier.