THE LOST CHRISTMAS EVE

When you get a little older and you've seen your share of Christmas's, Christmas music gets a little....you know.......redundant? That's why I haven't bought any new Christmas music in years.....that is until tonight, when I attended a Trans Siberian Orchestra concert and was overwhelmed with the performance, but that's another review.

The Lost Christmas Eve is the third alleged Christmas album that TSO has released. I say alleged because any similarity to conventional Christmas music is strictly accidental and that's fine with me. I guess you could say it's Christmas music for people that can't stand Christmas music anymore.

True, we have a couple requisite Christmas standards like "What Child is This" performed in TSO's inimitable Classical Orchestral Heavy Metal style but for the preponderance of the twenty-three tracks the only connection to Xmas is the word Christmas Eve.

The Lost Christmas Eve is (surprise) a concept album not unlike TSO's masterpiece Beethoven's Last Night or for that matter Savatage's Dead Winter Dead or any of their other seven rock opera style concept albums

For those not familiar with the Savatage connection let my edify you. No less than three members and former members of that tradition rich band (Jon Olivos, Al Petrelli and Johnny Lee Middleton) performed on this album with Olivos, in conjunction with Savatage producer extraordinaire Paul O'neil and Robert Kinkel, being a member of the creative triumvirate as well. Yes, TSO is an extension of Savatage, sort of an outlet for their softer more formal side.

The Story line

Briefly The Lost Chistmas Eve revolves around an angel being sent to Earth by the Lord, "to bring Him the name of the person that best continued the work of his Son on Earth".

Favorite songs

The rocking song "Faith Noel" with not one but two old time Christmas carols, starts with a brief intro of "The First Noel" goes through a guitar driven symph rock bridge then diverges back into "God Rest ye Merry Gentlmen".

The slow building, power ballad "The Lost Christmas Eve" with heavy bass and acoustic guitar.

"Christmas Dreams" is a great up tempo ballad sung by my favorite singer from the concert, a fabulous singer named Michael Lanning. This guy is great!!!! Better in person than on the album.

"Winter in Wizards" A trickey, clever number featuring great piano playing with the band and violins joining at length.

Want a little Blues with you Christmas music? "Christmas Nights in Blue" is your song, Excellent!!

The well titled "Christmas Jam" is a hard rock/heavy metal jam that will knock your socks off. (especially in person)It has just enough bells and sundries to sound a little Christmasy. (made up a new word)

"What is Christmas?" A nice medium paced song with a big sound.

"Wish Liszt" From a Franz Liszt number

"What Child is This", A better version of the song you know and love. Powerful!!

"Christmas Canon Rock" A takeoff of Pacabel's Canon, wonderful!!!

Conclusion

The strength of The Lost Christmas Eve is, it can be all things to all people. To non Christians (there are a few billion) and those just sick of Xmas music, it is ear candy, a serious composition of beautiful melodies played in an imaginative enthralling style, by musicians of unquestioned ability.

Then for the the Xmas aficionados there are enough familiar Xmas melodies to satisfy them that this is indeed a new style of Christmas music - though many of the familiar melodies are instrumentals and classical classics, such as Mozart's -"Queen of the Winter Night" and Pacabel's "Canon" are indeed classics but not in the Christmas sense.

Now for the former group here is the good news, The Lost Christmas Eve so little resembles sappy mainstream Christmas music and is overall so inspiring that, you may want to play this music all year.

Author's Note

Admittedly I wrote this review while under the influence...........of the marvelous TSO rock concert that just enthralled me.

Was I influenced? Who knows, what do you think?

A Proggy Christmas

Excuse the horrible pun. My family is really big into TS Orchestra. It's about the only thing music wise we somewhat have in common, so excuse me for any side banter. This (the band's music) is played every Christmas, it's almost a tradition like the TBS marathon of A Christmas Story, it's just something thats done and you've got to do it once a year.

There's enough variety here to keep things interesting, and for Christmas standards, that's good news. Some of you may already be familiar with Wizards in Winter (it was used for that famous internet video-turned Miller Lite commercial for the guy with the Christmas Lights, played along to this song). The album has more to offer than this though, with surely some sounds you can familiarize yourself with.

It's not a "serious" album by any means (although the whole based around a religious holiday would seem to make it serious). It's a much more fun album, with lots of hard rocking, some blues, and many classical based allusions. In short, if your looking for different and more "fun" Christmas music to boost the joy, a highly recommend this. It won't go down as a prog great, but it's wonderful for that one month out of the year and that day with the whole family.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra - 'The Lost Christmas Eve' 3 stars

Continuing on the right path.

I thought the last album was pretty good. They were going into a more instrumental approach then just choirs singing Christmas songs. This album continued that approach in this case. While the prior album had some absolutely devastating songs, this one didn't have any that were truly unbelievable. Unlike it though, the album had many more songs that were actually good and not just the lame Christmas songs you can find 1000 of the same versions on random Christmas cd's. I can recommend this one just as much as 'Beethoven's Last Night'.

If you want to listen to Christmas music, but want music with a litlte more energy, Trans-Siberian Orchestra is the way to go, and this is THE album for you. It is superior to their two previous Christmas albums, and includes one of their most popular songs, Wizards in Winter.

There is not a whole lot to say about this album that doesn't also apply to their first two Christmas albums. Unlike Beethoven's Last Night, the story is not really the highlight here. I do like this story better than their other two Christmas stories, however.

In this album,, the music is unrelentingly catchy. There are high moments, of course, but unlike their previous two albums, there aren't as many songs that seem overfull of exposition. Instead, we get songs like "The Lost Christmas Eve", which advances the story while still creating nice atmosphere and sounding musically interesting.

The ultimate highlight of this album, however, is the instrumentals. This one has the best instrumnentals of all three of their Christmas albums. This includes the aforementioned Wizards in Winter, Queen of the Winter Night, Wish Liszt (Toy Show Madness). The other instrumentals on this one are also great.

This album also include some humour, most notably in "What is Christmas?". In the middle of this song, the singer, lamenting how he hates snow, comments, "I don't even like the sound of it. Now, what was I talking about? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, oh yeah, I remember." It is just ridiculously cheesy, especially the laugh (which sounds somewhat evil), but in a way that comes across as funny instead of overwrought.

Definitely the highlight of their Christmas trilogy, and the best Christmas album I have heard so far. It does follow the same formula as their previous two, but Trans-Siberian Orchestra has mastered it here, and their Christmas music has never sounded better.

Four stars to any who like to get in the Christmas mood, and a solid three stars for all others (as the music, especially instrumentals, is great).

I have to hand it to Paul O'Neill. The man who rescued SAVATAGE those many years ago simply by believing in them and then putting his faith into practice by helping to write and compose songs with them sure has a way of telling stories. This might be my favourite of the three TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA albums I own.

As per usual Paul writes the words and composes the music. Once again the story centers around an angel who is sent to earth with a quest. This time to pick one person who can continue the work God's son did when down here. So we get the listen to the story of the angel's travels and experiences as he seeks to find this person. Going back to heaven to reveal to his Lord who he thinks this person is he realizes that anyone can be that person if they "Do unto others as they would have done unto them".

Once again we get members and former members of SAVATAGE helping out like Oliva, Middleton, Pitrelli and Caffery. I like the middle section where we get the jazzy "Christmas Jazz" followed by "Christmas Jam" and "Siberian Sleigh Ride". The latter has some energetic guitar in it.

This cd came with thick liner notes detailing the story along with lots of other info.