Japan Live '94

Musical wise, this album makes it! No instruments over power any other instrument. Which is very essential for any metal live album. You can't really here the audience in this album, like some albums. The only time you can hear them is at the end of songs. Savatage is also not very interactive with the audience, which could be a bad or good thing -take as is. The riffs are great, solo's are also good; they're played just the same as they would on the original work. The one thing I did not like about this album is the choice of songs. Be warned Oliva is not singing on this album! For me that makes a big difference. Stevens is good, but nothing comes even close to Oliva. So the choice of the songs is generally the new stuff; songs that I am not farmiliar with. They sound good, musical wise, but the singing is way different. They do, however manage to play some good songs like Sirens, Gutter Ballet, which are all classics. One bad thing about this though is the singing, it is hard to get that same tone that Oliva had, especially on the high squeals. Stevens fails miserablly at singing Olivia's parts. Especially on Gutter Ballet at the end when it gets all high pitched. One thing I like was at the end of He Carves His Stone (which is a killer song) and then it jumps into Jesus Saves (another killer song). Overall an ok album, just some minor things that make it not worthy. I would recommend this to Savatage fans, especially the newer ones.