Savatage - Vicious Rumors

Nov.1 , 1991

Herford, Germany - Rock Heaven
From: RockHard
By: Holger Stratmann
Translation: Ellen Bakvis

Savatage and Vicious Rumors touring together, that's a treat for all metal fans. This has been one of the very few tours that really were succesfull, besides thrash/death concerts and the biggies in the business. Savatage is not just a metal band, because of their unique compositions they are rather "exotic", nevertheless it is characteristic that such a fist class band has already made seven (!) LP's, before they can collect the proper resonance. Like in Cologne's E-Werk last week, the venue was well filled.

Vicious Rumors from San Francisco - part of the US-metal scene since the early 80's - are a routined live band. "Raise Your Hands" was the opening song. Not the best thing the Rumors got gong for themselves, but a good live song.
The real highlights came later on: "Worlds And Machines", "Digital Dictator", "Don't Wait For Me", "Hellraiser": alltogether first class power metal - songs. Besides, the songs were presented with the obvious aim to astonish the audience, and that asks for a lot of motion on stage.
Vicious Rumors had no trouble at all convincing the 1000 Rock Heaven - visitors of their mission. Not every opening act goes offstage under a loud "We want more...!" , but Vicious Rumors certainly did !

*** From the very beginning Savatage had no problems with feedback from the audience. The new LP "Streets" is again a masterpiece beyond compare, and therefor ofcourse main issue in the set of this quintet from Florida, reinforced with a keyboardist on this tour. It speaks for itself, that Jon Oliva can not create an atmosphere as a front man and take care of the numerous piano passages of the last two albums at the same time.

And so Savatage's frontman concentrated on the one thing he does best anyhow: working up the crowd! The corpulent singer, who somehow shows a lot of resemblance with a dancing bear ( in the good sense of the word) , staggers across the stage without taking a break, grinning from ear to ear, pulling his brother Criss by the hair and kicking bassist Johnny Lee Middleton in the ass. Kick-ass-Rock'n'Roll is the expression for this.

The fact that his vocal performance can hardly be compared to his studio work on the other hand can't possibly have disturbed anyone.
Songs like "The Dungeons Are Calling", "Power Of The Night", "Hall Of The Mountain King", "She's In Love", "Hounds", "Of Rage And War" or "Gutter Ballet" are equally brilliant as the tracks of the new album "Streets".

Savatage belongs to the few bands, that are able to fill a 90 minutes - set with nothing but brilliant songs. Bombast in this context is not a stylistic abundance, it's a guarantee for crackling suspence.
Nevertheless, Savatage are extremely hard, loud and monstruous. And it is this contrast that people like.
Because it doesn't happen too often that a singer, after 80 devastating minutes , sits himself down at the piano to sing a wonderful ballad like "Believe"...