Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Paul O'Neill opens up about new Night Castle album

Somewhere between the worlds of arena rock and Broadway musicals lies Trans-Siberian Orchestra. The New York-based symphonic rock collective has become a holiday institution with its treatments of Christmas standards and well-known classical pieces as a part of a rock opera trilogy.

TSO first introduced itself to fans with 1996's now classic Christmas Eve and Other Stories, which has sold more than two million copies. 1998's The Christmas Attic and 2004's The Lost Christmas Eve continued the yuletide spirit.

In concert, every TSO performance includes a Pink Floyd-on-steroids laser show, towering bursts of pyrotechnic flames and imitation snowflakes drifting down on the audience as up to 24 tuxedo-and-evening gown clad rock musicians perform with an orchestral octet.

The band's spectacular success has led to two touring companies criss-crossing the country every winter. Composer/lyricist Paul O'Neill typically splits his time touring with both the East Coast and West Coast ensembles.

He often can be seen taking the stage in sunglasses and a leather jacket during intermission to thank the audience for their continued support.

"If it weren't for [the fans], I'd have to get a real job and I'd be in trouble," O'Neill quips during a phone call from New York. The hirsute visionary has also been known to strap on a guitar to perform TSO's enduring hit single "Christmas Eve (Sarajevo/1224)" in concert.

Now a new tale from O'Neill's pen entitled Night Castle has emerged —- and it's not exactly holly or jolly.

The double-disc Night Castle collection tells of a chance encounter between a young girl and an old soldier with a magical tale. It is only the group's second non-holiday album, following 2000's Beethoven's Last Night —- a Faustian fictionalization of the legendary composer's demise.

At the crux of Night Castle are the redemptive actions of a Khmer Rouge general who breaks rank with his murderous ideology to help a dying American soldier.

"I think it was [philosopher Edmund] Burke who said, 'Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.' If you see a mugging across the street, would you go over and help that person? You would certainly want them to help you." O'Neill says in explaining the moral questions pondered on Night Castle. "Civilization is not an accident. It takes eternal vigilance and it's at its most dangerous when it has been [safe] for a while…Evil is unbelievably patient."

Night Castle was originally due in July 2005, but the album only arrived late last month. Back in 2005, TSO composer/lyricist Paul O'Neill and his main collaborators, pianist Robert Kinkel and songwriter Jon Oliva, envisioned Night Castle as a straightforward rock album sans weighty themes.

But Night Castle's intricate storyline came to O'Neill in a flash of inspiration, much like all of Trans-Siberian's other narrative-rich material.

"Originally it was going to be just 10 songs, a regular record, but then Jon said, 'Now Paul, Trans-Siberian fans expect the stories,' and I knew [he] was right," O'Neill recalls, "so it went from being a 10-song regular album to a 26-song double album." A 68-page CD booklet that accompanies Night Castle features illustrations by famed artist Greg Hildebrandt.

The album's familiar blend of rocked-out classical music and hard-driving originals will certainly appeal to longtime fans.

"Tocatta - Carpimus Noctem" is a reprise of Bach's famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor, conjuring up images of Halloween with doom-laden organ and heavy metal riffs. "Moonlight & Madness" opens with the frenzied final movement of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" before morphing into a fiery instrumental display of six-string fretwork and pounding percussion.

"Sparks" and "Dreams We Conceive," meanwhile, advance Night Castle's narrative with passionate vocals that owe as much to the theatrical bombast of Broadway as to the uplifting anthems of arena rock.

The collection's first single, "Nutrocker," is a nod to the group's holiday heritage. It features a guest appearance by bassist Greg Lake of Emerson, Lake & Palmer, who first introduced the Tchaikovsky-inspired instrumental into their repertoire in 1970.

O'Neill says Lake's involvement in re-recording the track came after the latter joined TSO onstage one night during their 2007 holiday tour. The two men bonded over a mutual love of progressive rock.

"With any other form of music, when you go into jazz and you do some kind of [different] music, it's no longer jazz. With blues, you go a certain direction, it's no longer blues. Reggae you do something [else,] it's no longer reggae," O'Neill recalls being told by Lake. "But progressive rock has no limits. It's always trying to push the envelope and try something different. You can do classical, you can do a waltz, you can do reggae, you do anything and that kind of artistic freedom is just great."

Queensrÿche frontman discusses American Soldier

When Queensrÿche undertook the recording of their latest album, American Soldier, it was an unprecedented move even for a band with such a richly experimental history in the studio.

American Soldier uses a wealth of sound clips—collected from dozens of audio and video interviews that singer Geoff Tate conducted with soldiers over the course of two years—to tell the universal story of U.S. military personnel.

"This was really a record that everybody in the band seemed to get into quite a bit," Tate reveals. "We liked the cinematic aspect of writing to the tapes, watching those and getting a feel for what the tone and the mood was like."

The result is an album bristling with powerful lyrics and equally powerful music that explores the nuances of a soldier's experience—from boot camp to battle, from separation anxiety while serving overseas to the challenges of returning to civilian life.

In all, Tate spoke to those who served during every American conflict from World War II to the present. What struck him most were the unifying themes that spanned generations and bridged experiences.

"I thought [with] all the different generations of [military personnel] I talked to they would be very different, but what I found was the soldiers' experiences were really rather similar," he says. "They're concerned about managing their fear, the loss of colleagues and friends and being separated from their families. These kinds of subjects were predominant in the conversations."

"Sliver," the disc's first track, opens with the barking of a drill sergeant and serves as an aural boot camp to indoctrinate the listener into military life. "Man Down!" employs breakneck-paced guitars and bludgeoning drums to explore post-traumatic stress disorder. "Home Again," by contrast, moves along at a gentle acoustic shuffle, with lyrics that create a narrative inspired by the letters of a deployed soldier and his young daughter at home.

"At 30,000 Ft," meanwhile, is one of the most gripping tracks. It details a pilot's emotional detachment from the act of bombing a city far below.

The band manages to distill the moral dilemma about inflicting so much damage while being separate from the experience with lyrics such as "I'll send the 'Pigs' away / the tortured painful cries / will never fall upon my ears / and never stain my elder years / my heartbeat is all I'll feel." The song alternates between a melancholy minor key melody to suggest the pilot's anguished mind and blitzkrieg power chords to recreate the chaotic sounds of an aerial strike.

It is this kind of attention to realistic emotional detail that makes American Soldier such a riveting listen and one of the band's most exciting albums in recent years.

Formed in 1981, Queensrÿche developed a signature sound by blending the aggression of New Wave of British Heavy Metal acts like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest with the artistic prowess of progressive rock acts such as Pink Floyd and King Crimson.

It was Operation: Mindcrime that first introduced Queensrÿche's fascination with themed concept albums. The 1988 opus told a complete narrative with a set cast of characters rather than being a collection of unrelated songs. The storyline was revisited for 2006's Operation: Mindcrime II.

1990's Empire further solidified the group's reputation as the thinking man's heavy metal band, selling more than three million copies and yielding their highest-charting single, "Silent Lucidity."

The band -- also featuring original members guitarist Michael Wilton, bassist Ed Jackson and drummer Scott Rockenfield, plus newly added second guitarist Parker Lundgren -- will play suites of music from American Soldier, Empire and 1986's Rage for Order during their current tour.

Also joining Queensrÿche on the road will be Lita Ford. The '80s metal songstress will use Tate & Co. as her backing band and together they will reprise her hits including "Close My Eyes Forever."

"We thought it would be fun instead of having a standard opening act kind of thing to have her come on stage with us and play some songs," Tate says.

Paris Keeling's End of Ride Revisited CD review

Paris Keeling
End of Ride Revisited (Surgeland)

Paris Keeling's End of Ride was one recording that really flew under the radar in 2006. Now fans of melodic rock have a chance to rediscover this modern classic with a new reissue that features bonus tracks and remixes. End of Ride Revisited is a study in contrasts -- from the rock star riffs of "Tears of Heaven" and "Head Straight" to introspective acoustic cuts such as "Life" and "She Was." It's precisely when the band dials down the decibels that faithful professions like the gently orchestrated "Free" and the reverential "Morning Song" shine.

This review originally appeared in the December 2009 issue of Christian Music Today.

Living Colour's Corey Glover discusses new album

Living Colour seemed destined for recognition from the moment they first caught the eye of Mick Jagger in 1986 while performing at New York's legendary CBGB. The Rolling Stones frontman produced an early demo that helped the fledgling rockers land a record deal.

Singer Corey Glover, guitarist Vernon Reid, drummer Will Calhoun and original bassist Muzz Skillings released their 1988 Vivid debut to immediate success and eventual double-platinum sales. Their unique sound took a heavy metal framework and injected it with elements of art rock and avant-garde jazz that belied their bohemian New York roots.

If Michael Jackson broke the color barrier on MTV, it was Living Colour that fully integrated African-Americans into the white-dominated heavy metal scene. Groundbreaking videos for "Cult of Personality," "Glamour Boys" and other Vivid hits helped the band connect with a multicultural hard rock audience in a way few black rockers have since Jimi Hendrix.

Time's Up, 1990's sophomore effort, was critically praised though less commercially successful. A third effort, 1993's Stain, found bassist Doug Wimbish replacing Skillings. However, the album got lost in the wave of grunge rock and the band soon parted ways.

A comeback album titled Collideoscope arrived in 2003, but was followed by another down period as each member pursued different creative directions. Glover's path included a two-year stint from 2006-2008 as Judas in a touring production of the musical Jesus Christ Superstar.

"I loved doing Superstar. It was one of the best times I've had in a very long time," the singer admits. "It actually sort of spurred me on to want to make another Living Colour record because I enjoyed being on the road so much…[and] it made me really enjoy singing again."

Now the band's studio silence has been broken again with a new album, The Chair in the Doorway. According to Glover, it was Wimbish who played a key role in culling songwriting ideas from rehearsal tapes, soundboard recordings and the occasional studio session. His efforts helped lay the groundwork for the Chair recording sessions at Sono Studios in the Czech Republic.

"[Living Colour] had been on the road in Europe for a month and a half and we had a two-week break in between," Glover recalls. "And we said, 'OK, let's go into the studio and put down all these grooves [that Wimbish collected.]' A bunch of songs came out of it. That's how we knew we were ready to make an album."

Chair spans the gamut of sounds from heavy rockers like "Burned Bridges" and "DecaDance" to the slide blues-meets-modern rock vibe of "Bless Those."

"Behind the Sun," the CD's first single, opens with a fleet-fingered riff that ranks as one of Reid's most impassioned displays of fretboard wizardry in the entire Living Colour catalog. The song also suggests a sonic progression to U2 territory with spacious Brian Eno-like production work.

The single's lyrics—-a statement about human resilience after 2005's Hurricane Katrina—-were precipitated by Glover's travels to New Orleans with an activist group called NY2NO. The student-led organization arranges for groups of New York City teens to volunteer in the Crescent City.

"It's been four years since Katrina and people are still not home. There are still abandoned buildings, there are still [empty] lots," he says. "Despite whatever you want to say about how tragic it was and what missteps were made, people were still living. Life still went on."

Of course, Living Colour are no strangers to making thought-provoking music. Their 1989 hit "Cult of Personality" offered a pointed statement about media manipulation set to a head-banging soundtrack, and it earned the band their first Grammy for Best Hard Rock performance. In 2007, the group re-recorded this signature tune for Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock.

The challenge that now lies ahead of Living Colour is striking a balance between old favorites and new material during their current North American tour.

"We're primarily a live band," Glover says. "A recording is just a moment in time. If you want to see how it evolved and where it went and where it is going, come see us live. Then go home, listen to the record and hear how it's changed. And know that we're going to come back and it's going to change from there."

The Sword's Gods of the Earth CD review

When the Sword emerged in 2006, no one quite knew how to take the Austin-based quartet. Four guys in their mid-20s who sang about wizards and warlocks like they were the little cousins of Ronnie James Dio?!

Now the Sword are back with their second album, Gods of the Earth, and it's something of a retro-metal manifesto. Black Sabbath may be the obvious influence here, but the Sword's style is equally indebted to mid-'80s thrash metal. "The Sundering" and "The White Sea" are built around the kind of staccato, palm-muted riffing popularized by Metallica, Megadeth and others.

Singer/guitarist John D. Cronise and guitarist Kyle Shutt make a formidable axe-wielding duo. Both musicians bring some of the virtuosity that defined the venerable guitar tag-teams of Judas Priest and Iron Maiden into the netherworld of doom metal. Drummer Trivett Wingo, meanwhile, makes it a trifecta. His commanding, punked-out performance recalls monolithic '70s kingpin John Bonham (symphonic gongs, anyone?), while bassist Bryan Richie stays buried in the mix.

If you're looking for a literary equivalent, Gods of the Earth could be the soundtrack for the fearsome black riders in The Lord of the Rings—all galloping thrash-metal riffs accompanied by strangulated, off-key vocals. To the believers, this album will be hailed as the second coming of NWOBHM-inspired thrash/doom. The nay-sayers, meanwhile, will look at titles like "How Heavy This Axe" or "Fire Lances of the Ancient Hyperzephyrians" and know this band may be teetering on the edge of Spinal Tap territory. To each his own…

Lehigh Valley Rocks! The Best of 1984-1994 CD review

If famed musicologist Alan Lomax were reincarnated as an '80s metal aficciando, he might compile a release of field recordings like Lehigh Valley Rocks! The Best of 1984-1994. This two-disc compilation captures in loving detail the sounds of 27 bands from an almost forgotten frontier of the spandex nation.

Is it really any surprise that Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley -- a blue-collar region long synonymous with steel production -- birthed a raucous cast of independent heavy metal and hard rock groups throughout the '80s and early '90s? While nearby Philadelphia spawned gold and platinum acts like Britny Fox and Cinderella, this neglected corner of the Keystone State gave rise to "could've beens" such as Shok Graffiti, Sweet Tequila and Vicious Barreka.

Disc one offers a parade of bands that might have easily enjoyed airplay and MTV support in their era. From the saccharine strains of Omynus' "Don't Ever Say Goodbye" to the lusty bravado of Teeze's "Party Hardy," Lehigh Valley Rocks! shows that unsigned hair metal is just as good as the corporate stuff. Elsewhere, Sweet Tequila take a salty romp through Black Crowes-inspired territory on "I Won't Be Crying" and Idle Threats ' "Find a Way" blends a galloping sound reminiscent of early Queensrÿche with pop-friendly hooks. Washed's epic and nuanced "Guilty," meanwhile, treads experimental territory and proves that you don't have to be Ravi Shankar to rock a sitar.

Disc two digs even deeper into the underground to spotlight the Lehigh Valley scene's heavier side. Groups like Vicious Barreka and Leviathen unleash the primitive ferocity of thrash metal, while Atom West is a crossover act in the vein of D.R.I. or early Corrosion of Conformity. A welcome moment of demented comic relief comes in the form of Vic Missy's "Terror/Cartoon Lady." The tune's disjointed song structure and menacing soundscapes evoke the creepiness of Mike Patton's Mr. Bungle project.

The compilation's carefully researched liner notes -- featuring brief band bios/lineups, songwriting/publishing credits and the bands' current websites or MySpace pages -- also deserve kudos. Lomax would be proud.

Mystery Bloom, Lifetime in the Heart CD review

New Jersey has proven time and again that it's always been a fertile ground for local talent. The now-defunct Mystery Bloom is the latest band of Garden State rockers to come to my attention. MB arose out of the ashes of N.J. club band Sinnocence and features three members from that long-gone outfit—guitarist Danny Roselle, bassist Nick Clemente and drummer Dave Garcia. Singer Ray Morales and guitarist Bob Gilmartin round out the MB lineup on Lifetime in the Heart, a reissue of the group's Frame of Mind debut.

The disc opens with the prog-metal stylings of "Frame of Mind," with strong Kansas-like group vocals and a vaguely Middle Eastern sounding guitar/keyboard riff. Vocals are, in fact, a big key to the MB sound. While Morales' voice has shades of late Badlands singer Ray Gillen, the entire group's dulcet throats drive songs such as "Life" and "Soulmate Serenade." The guys even hit a 4-part a capella harmony on "Paperback Writer," a cover of the Beatles' tune! In this respect, MB can be understood as a hard-rock band with real '60s and '70s pop roots; there's such an emphasis on harmony backing vocals in both the arrangement and execution of songs that you can almost hear echoes of legendary Motown vocal groups. Of course, the rock is never sacrificed on any of the tracks.

If MB has any fault, it's that their tunes make it almost too easy to pin down the musical reference points. "Adore" opens with an acoustic chord progression copped from Alice Cooper's "Only Women Bleed" before moving into a chorus that's reminiscent of Tesla's "Love Song." Meanwhile, "Life" sounds like it could have been an Enuff Z'Nuff outtake, with its Fab Four-like harmonies and gentle lyrical disposition. The disc only really falters on the Latin funk-rock jam "Pray Another Day," which at nearly 6 minutes is the longest track here. All in all, this is a solid effort with appreciable musicianship and a great knack for marrying prog-rock aspirations with pop tendencies.