SAVATAGE — Fight For The Rock (review)

SAVATAGE — Fight For The Rock album cover

Album · 1986 · Heavy Metal

3/5 · 2016-04-07
UMUR

"Fight For The Rock" is the 3rd full-length studio album by US, Florida based heavy rock/metal act Savatage. The album was released through Atlantic Records in June 1986. There´s been one lineup change since "Power Of The Night (1985)" as bassist Keith Collins has been replaced by Johnny Lee Middleton. "Fight For The Rock" is often considered the odd one out in Savatage discography and the band have often gone on record saying that they weren´t too happy about it. It was not popular among the band´s fans or reviewers either. Lead vocalist/Keyboard player Jon Oliva had begun writing pop/rock material for other artists signed to Atlantic Records, but the label insisted that some of those songs should be recorded by Savatage and featured on "Fight For The Rock"...

...hence the shift in musical direction on this album compared to the first two. "Power Of The Night (1985)" also featured a couple of more mainstream oriented moments (most notably "Hard For Love"), but was still overall a relatively hard edged heavy/power metal album. The music on "Fight For The Rock" is a departure from the harder edged sound of the first two albums, and almost solely features mainstream oriented heavy rock/metal (with pretty generic man loves woman type lyrical themes). This is still unmistakably the sound of Savatage, but much softer and deliberately commercial in sound. The best example of that is probably "Day After Day".

The material on 10 track, 37:54 minutes long album is accessible, relatively well written, and well arranged for the style, and in some cases memorable beyond the album´s playing time. Few tracks stand out as something out of ordinay for the time and musical style, but tracks like "The Edge Of Midnight", "Hyde", "Red Light Paradise", and the title track, are small highlights on an otherwise pretty standard quality release.

One of the great assets of the album is the high level musicianship. Jon Oliva has lost none of his vocal power and rawness, although his performance here was his most varied up until then. The rhythm section is solid as a rock, and Criss Oliva also plays convincing. At times delivering blistering leads. The sound production is professional, clear, and well sounding, so it´s mostly in the songwriting department where things are different compared to the preceeding Savatage releases. I suspect that much of the criticism "Fight For The Rock" has gotten over the years, has more to do with the fact that it was released on a wrong premise (namely the label´s and not the band´s) than it has to do with the actual quality of the music. The shift in musical direction was too abrupt and for many fans probably felt a bit too calculated towards commercial success. Putting on more objective glasses "Fight For The Rock" is still a decent quality heavy rock/metal release and a 3 star (60%) rating isn´t all wrong.

more than 2 years ago
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UMUR wrote:

more than 2 years ago

Yeah it often ends that way, but the big labels have always tried to follow trends to make artists sell more albums, instead of letting the artist decide themselves how their music should sound. Some artists have been strong enough to stand up to the labels while others haven´t. This is a case of the latter.