"Night Castle" has been blathered about, anticipated, and tinkered with for nearly seven years. Now here it is, arriving with B movie level art and about as much excitement as a hedge. In winter. Perhaps even pruned. The terrible packaging proudly features a ridiculously bargain basement art for its cover that is plastered with a 1986 My Little Pony Dream Castle shot in dark gothy spook lighting and ghastly low tech writing slathered over it in a cheesy, cheap looking font. The two disc set is presented with all the professionalism that could be summoned by the likes of an elementary student that slapped it together between school and a playdate. How this is supposed to appeal to the (ahem) mainstream or the metal purchasing populace is beyond most anyone with an eye for decent graphic design, which this is not an example of.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "Night Castle", for all its mystique and fantasy aspirations, ends up being an eerie deja vu rehash that tumbles through both Savatage and previous TSO repretoirs, with few new ideas brought to the sprawling two discs it requires. The album casually jaunts through pale imitations of previous classical born songs that Savatage (or TSO) have already rendered. Such would be Savatage's "Mozart and Madness" (now called "Mozart and Memories", clever eh what?) and here especially is the culprit "The Mountain" which is none other than yet another instrumental spazzing of Grieg's "Hall of the Mountain King" which was grandly (and appropriately, madly) done some twenty plus years ago also under the Savatage name. The near perfect epic ballad "Believe" has been raided from mothership Savatage's "Streets: The Rock Opera" and given an abused treatment. The track has been reduced to slumming around as a piano driven barroom bawler, bandied about by a disasterously erroded voice, whose owner seems to have done nothing else in their past waking half century other than chain smoke. It is blasphemous, gross, and completely pointless.
 
And though pompous, pretentious and epic all around, this is an album (or two) that is hopelessly bloated like a beached, bleached, sickly, dying whale gasping for tedious life on sandy shores. All that greatness wasted for naught, if only they had dabbled in more fortuitous waters. That leaves the daunting, hushed question of "What's the point?" "Castle" brings nothing spectacular to the table and leaves its stony interior curiously bleak and inspirationally barren. For all its self important, numbingly excessive, rock opera-ness shoved down the throat, it's about as exciting as a tumble down rocky ruin. Grand enough indeed, but overwrought with cobwebs, leaky roofs, drafts and the echoes of greatness that once might have filled the halls.

Extended militant horn solos ("Lion's Roar") and noodling instrumentals bog the pacing and clog the albums down to a marshy crawl. Talking set pieces bare of anything but dialogue and sound effects set the scene but also urge one to hit the "skip" button. And perhaps all these orchestrated twiddlings, foreign babbling and excessive instrumental interludes could be endured if the everlasting patience required was rewarded with a vocal explosion that left your blood bubbling, your mind melting and your knees trembling. Instead, it is usually followed by some John Doe, Mr. Theater Singer off Broadway, who sounds like a paid hand rather than someone who has devoted their soul to living, breathing and transforming the piece from mundane to magic.
 
The lack of "real metal and/or rock singers" has been a constant complaint about Trans-Siberian Orchestra since their first merry holiday flight back in the 90s and persists even louder today, as "Night Castle" would have been a more dynamic disc if a distinctive pallette of vocalists had been utilized instead of these Joe Schmoe Broadway guys that seem to be over-emoting everything just for the sake of it, and otherwise going by the script with all the fire in the North Pole (of which there isn't any, of course).

"Another Way to Die" has the machine gun rhythmic vocal pacing of "Blackjack Guillotine", yet missing its twisted snarl and snapping axes plus features the vocals of Jeff Scott Soto which is a complete mind blowing surprise.  He spins the fierceness here and is the absolutely most imaginative singer to be involved.  His involvement on the short title track makes it a quick pleaser as well.  "Dreams We Concieved" is a Sava-ballad without the flagrant flair, and is certainly no "All That I Bleed" though the titles do in fact, rhyme.  Jeff Scott's vocals are lovely but the song is too overwrought in its own pursuit of melodrama to be lifted much beyond.  "There Was a Light" is a page out of TSO's emotional sticklers but minus the engaging elements. These are bare shadows that are puffed up into mocking examples of what could-be, but is not. A thorny reminder of all that is missing.

The double disc-er does have all the bold pretention of the opera or a Broadway extravaganza, one of those too-long theater production that are all smoke, flair and false drama. Perhaps it would work more elegantly in the stage setting, with the props and live singers and all the pomp and circumstance that makes a live musical, come alive. But as a humble musical entity, there are too many lulls and wasted time that drag the presentation down. While the execution of symphonic orchestration married at the alter to heavy rock is still a commendable direction, it is no longer the novelty that it once was, as many bands have sought that route to varying degrees of success (and the ever-lust of its starry eyed fan followers still bleating their undying love). It is not near as fresh as it was when Savatage first began expanding their sound from cutting straightforward metal into the storytelling theatrical that pushed them into progressive borders.

What made the original TSO Christmas albums work (and left the "other" non-Christmas related TSO album, "Beethoven's Last Night" largely forgotten) were the rock opera-esque intrepretations of traditional Christmas songs mixed in with a handful of new complimentary tracks that advanced a compelling story that translated the spirit of the season. Here they have tried reproducing that trick by using popular classical pieces as the familiar stepping stones and the results are not quite on the same level. Perhaps the listening audience is not quite as connected to these songs as they are the holiday tunes. Or perhaps the accompanying new material borrows too heavily from the past works. The musicianship is undoubtedly top notch, the vocals are even appropriate (even if not wholly satisfying). Yet for all the careful planning, apparent effort, mountains of instruments, and pristine production there is barren little here of long lasting interest in the daunting towering and surprisingly quite magically bereft "Night Castle", for all its good intentions and grandly orchestrated design.

Written by Alanna
Saturday, November 21, 2009
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Ratings

Alanna: 5/10

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