Venue: The Garage, London      Date: Wednesday 13th February, 2002

Set list: Intro: "Show must go on" from Queen; Commissar; Surrender; Sarajevo; Medley: Handful of Rain / Dead Winter Dead / Wake up of Magellan / Edge of Thorns; Medley: 24 Hours Ago / Behind the Doors of the Dark / Sirens / Strange Wings; Medley: 12/24 Sarajevo / Mozart / Chance, All That I bleed (for Chris Oliva); Morphine Child; Medley: Streets / Jesus Saves / Tonight He Grins Again / Agony & Ectasy / Believe; Gutter Ballet.
Encores: When The Crowds are Gone, Chris Caffery solo, Hall of the Mountain King.

Well the postponed Savatage tour finally happened, and the guys made it to London with Blaze in tow rather than personal favourites Symphony X. Vicious Rumours were also supposed to be on the bill, but when I arrived in Highbury, Blaze was already well into his set.

It was nice to see Blaze get a good long support set as he appears to have an enthusiastic fan-club, despite his fairly unpopular period fronting Iron Maiden. Approximately half of the venue, (mainly those at the front), loved him, but those at the back seemed fairly unimpressed and, as his set proceeded, the volume of abuse increased. His material is still very much rooted in the metal/hard rock of the 80s and, despite the band's enthusiastic performance, it still sounded very dated.

Blaze himself never seemed to stop moving and attempting to engage the crowd. Those at the front joined in with the singing and synchronized headbanging, but to many in the hall it was all a bit lame.  While his first album was well received, the new one (released in January 2001) has made less impact and it is difficult to see where the guy can go from here.

Considering it was the last night of a fairly lengthy tour, all the guys from Savatage looked fresh - and certainly sounded fresh too. Having last seen them with Zak and Al Pitrelli a few years back in France, I had some doubts over how the new guys would fit in, but all my doubts were blown away by the performance.

New frontman Damond does a great job and sounds every bit as good as Zak. His movements of stage don't seem to be everyone's taste, but to be honest the tiny stage at The Garage, meant moving about the stage was kept to an absolute minimum anyway. I was equally keen to see how Pitrelli's replacement - Jack Frost performed alongside longtime guitarist Chris Caffery. Not only did he contribute a steady rhythm guitar but he also has a good voice which is ideally suited to numbers like 'Chance'. I had no doubts however over the performances of Messrs Plate, Middleton and Oliva who all turned in their usual excellent performances.

With a long discography, it was no surprise to see that they have extended the concept of playing medleys from that used on their last headlining tour in Europe.  While increasing the number that they play, they have simultaneously increased the length of the extracts they use from each song, so we heard 4-5 minutes of many tunes rather than an unsatisfying 2 minutes as on the earlier tour.  It made for a very long set, but few fans would complain about that.

The set was full of highlights for me. They included some old favourites like '24 Hours Ago', 'Behind the Doors of the Dark', 'Sirens' and 'Strange Wings', through to cuts from the most recent 'Poets and Madmen' disk such as 'Commissar' and the wonderful 'Morphine Child' which was an absolute revelation on stage. They didn't put a foot wrong from my perspective.  All the albums from 'Sirens' through to the latest were represented (save for the 'Fight for the Rock' album).

However it is the material from the 1990 album 'Streets' which holds a particular place in my heart.  This is the first Savatage album I ever heard and songs like 'Believe' bring a tear to the eye even now. No Savatage show these days is complete without it, nor without a homage to Chris Oliva (Jon's brother), so tragically killed by a drunk driver 5 or 6 years ago. With songs such as 'Believe' and 'All that I Bleed', the emotion in the air is tangible - both in the audience and between the band members ... A special band indeed.

All together it was an extremely successful sold-out end of the tour date. I personally thought that it was a shame that they didn't play a larger venue. The set list would have satisfied most fans, no matter what their favourites Savatage album was, but there was one tiny omission from my long list of favourite tunes - 'Hounds'.

Charlie