POWER OF THE NIGHT

Savatage signed to Atlantic Records and went for bigger things. "Power of the Night" is the last album with original bass player Keith Collins, the Oliva brothers fired him as his playing was below par compared with the rest of the band, also it's been said that Jon and Criss Oliva recorded some bass themselves replacing some of Collins' "dodgy" tracks.

Anyway, "Power of the Night" was a huge step forward for the band, the songwriting being miles better than that of the two previous releases. Also a big record company added a cleaner and better production to the record. There are more keyboards on this album (played by Jon Oliva), those keys were used to give only background but still gave some hints of what was to come on later releases. This is most notably on the obscure song "Unusual".

All this was a big improvement for Savatage however they weren't a prog metal band yet. In the progressive context they still deserve less than three stars. 2 1/2 stars this time. Heavy metal lovers check this out!