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A masterpiece of destruction

The Father of Savatage and Trans-Siberian Orchestra is back with his solo-type project known as Jon Oliva’s Pain and the band’s with their fourth disc of metal madness. This time Oliva is taking on the problems of the world with Global Warning (released May 2008).

The album begins with the title track, reminiscent of some heavy sounding ELP with some blazing B-3 organ. It then proceeds into “Look At The World,” a tune with heavy guitars and drums and a simple piano piece bouncing through the song in a “Killer Queen” (the song by the band, Queen) like fashion. The song brings up the various problems of the world, everything from dope to gasoline and all of the twisted lies.

“Adding The Cost” is 100% Oliva as it kicks into some hard and heavy rock, ripping through a series of triplets and time changes. The song is massive. There are a large handful of guest musicians on this disc (including Obituary’s Ralph Santolla on this song and “You’ll Never Know), but I’m assuming that Matt Laporte is supplying, or at least co-supplying, the killer lead guitar parts on this song.

Oliva, of course, is providing lead vocals, guitars and keyboards. John Zahner is providing additional keyboards. Kevin Rothney is on bass & fretless bass. Christopher Kinder is on drums & percussion. The entire band provides backing vocals alongside the TFN choir.

“Before I Hang” really begins to incorporate the choir and orchestral feel to the album. Once again, it’s a very heavy feel. This concept album gets the point across aurally that the weight of our actions are dragging the world – society and the environment – down.

“Firefly” is the second longest song on the disc at 7:18. Both its length and the texture of the instruments remind me of Pink Floyd. I could picture this song being on The Wall. Despite the songs message of trying to hide from the guns and warfare, the music is soulfully beautiful.

“Master” is an interesting experiment with the driving heavy sound combined with the processors used on some of the instruments and especially with Oliva’s vocals. The song is about computers and the production sounds like the computer is the Master telling humanity how it controls us. It’s forceful and cruel in its timbre. Very thought provoking.

“The Ride” has some nice acoustic guitar (possibly Tom Morris) and the song has hammered dulcimer (Phil Anderson). The song bounces back and forth between an easy acoustic feel and some harder moments. I hate to say that most every song on Global Warning reminds me of someone else, but when I first heard “The Ride,” I thought of Union’s “October Morning Wind” or “Shine.” That’s not necessarily a bad thing in my book because Union was an awesome band and the influence for all of those songs seems to stem from Jimmy Page – also a cool thing.

“O To G” has a very nice piano intro with a soft synth pad in the background. This is the shortest piece on the disc, clocking in at 1:45. Most of the songs average in around 4:30 – 5:00 minutes. “O To G” transitions straight into “Walk Upon Water” without any delay. Basically, the two songs tell the story of a death and what happens afterwards.

“Stories” jumps back into the heavy crunch. The pace quickens when the triplets kick in and the song gets down and dirty.

“Open Up Your Eyes” mellows out with just piano and vocals for the first few bars before becoming very dramatic. Then the album is right back into some metal for “You Never Know” and a lot of wah-wah and reverb/chorus for the lead guitar sparingly thrown into the background.

The next track is something of an anomaly. The song is a combination called “Someone/Souls” and is a pleasant little piece of music. But the “Souls” portion of the song is actually only part of the limited edition version of the CD and not on the regular version. This would have the regular edition of the disc ending on a heavy note since “Souls” is a couple of minutes of nice acoustic music.

The limited edition also has the track “No More Saturday Nights,” a song that takes a little time getting into the main movement as it begins (and ends) with swelling, airy synths panning between channels. The main part of the song is very doom and gloom. It does make for a nice ending to the concept album.

But Wait!!! There’s More!!! IF you get a hold of the Japanese release, there is one more track called “I See.” The sample I heard was a very simple piano piece and Oliva seeing how high his voice could go on the octave scale. Not sure if the song improves, but what I heard at CD Japan didn’t warrant me going and tracking the import down for my collection. Although getting the vinyl British import might be worth it to me.

Kinder stated, “Some of these songs had over 100 tracks of recorded instruments, vocals, bells and whistles.” This is a heavily produced album that resulted in a masterpiece. I highly recommend this for any fan of any incarnation of Oliva’s work.

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