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Rating: Dylan Dog n. 66 "Game with Death". A citation of citations, cultured like a banana with a sticker. But I care little. I remember when I was in full adolescence, I read Dylan Dog to soften the various Poe and Dosto' and listened to Savatage to prematurely transition from puberty to a more mature age. Ridiculous! I had noticed that girls grew up faster. I wanted to grow up too, not knowing that I would regret it. Because now that I am at a (somewhat more) mature age and I listen to the Savatage again, with a life behind me not yet so long but loaded with golden axes and clubs, I have understood many things (ridiculous(!), I say this to myself here too). At the time of Handful Of Rain, they had already played the game with death. And they were entirely subjugated by it. Believing they won it, they explored with the heart of the metal/rocker that feeling of alienation and paranoia that one has in the dwelling built by oneself: a castle of damn questions to which only damn answers are found. But it is the way you ask the questions that becomes so imaginative, elusive, hypochondriac, in need of caresses, brilliant, progressive (in the sense of that inner crescendo felt in the illusory conviction of being close to the truth) that frescoes the castle in such a way that not even the Brothers Grimm could have devised. Towers with ninety-degree corners, lace from different eras, columns that span from Greek styles to Rococo. And a raft platform from Charon to lay the "monster", making them feel like seasoned explorers of the boundary between life and death.
This was the Savatage in 1994. The album in question is pathetic. But it is a patheticism that moves. Perhaps the English adjective moving better conveys the idea. Tracks that throb in the grip of schizophrenic raptures like Taunting Cobras and Nothing's Going On reveal wounded men who would like to be beasts but are simple naked creatures struggling against the constant movement of the windmills' balls, in an improbable comeback against the immobile solidity of events. Just like Don Quixote, they first make you feel a sense of derision, then pity. Moreover, it must be said that violence sharpens pain and salts the wounds. Even the explosion of strength and impact resistance worthy of a bullet-riddled Tony Montana is followed by a long moment of physical and moral pain, then the stasis. There arises dignity, leading to reason and clarity for the mere five minutes of the title track, which is a rough and stable awareness like an Audi with tinted windows, where you can travel and think while in the passing lane, and others, seeing your image in the rearview mirror, move aside, leaving the road as open as possible.
Even Savatage, as ordinary men and musicians, lived on a flat path of consciousness bordering a steep rock slope on one side and a fast and foggy downhill slope on the other. Slopes that measured the desire for challenge in life on one side, and the fear of cerebral obfuscation on the other. In the end, with a simple misstep, the neuronal connections can snap and one goes mad. While with many hard steps, one could climb back up. Oliva and company, shocked and stunned, are a muscular zombie wandering freely between the depths of humidity and the crevices of the highest rocks, discovering what can be felt in an epic life complete with emotions and discoveries, certainties and fatality, moments of recovery and irreparable slips. For this reason, tracks like Watching You Fall, Alone You Breathe, Stare Into The Sun, and all the others (how not to mention Castles Burning) redeem sonically, the notes of a journey we could not see, but which sounds like a complete and accomplished theatrical work, assigning the various moments of pathos on the crest of the silence of the listeners, to different musical genres. The crudest heavy metal leaves the stage to hard rock, epic metal, reflections of country, and progressive. Reflections of death punctuated by lyrics that provide vivid but, as I said before, equally pathetic and moving visions. Going by abstractions, listening today to Handful Of Rain, I seem to have these poor souls under my eyes, enclosed in a transparent plexiglass cube, moving like desperate adventurers detached from any real context. At first glance, they seem ridiculous, but if you observe them one by one, they have the movements of disoriented mythological heroes of our time. An album that makes its strength in its mixture and structure and, why not, its pursuit. An album that shows how Criss Oliva's death left the worst of living to the others of the band. The worst of living to the others of the band. And sorry for the repetition. The review. Not the concept. That is important.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Taunting Cobras (03:21)
Hey you
She's gonna get you
If you go walking by
This corner slow
Don't think she's gonna let you leave
Just because you want to go
Boy you
Ain't seen nothing yet
It's a long train of regret
Puppets get
No second chance
Pull that string
They gotta dance
Parellel addiction is
A double crucifixion
When you're always out there
Feeding your head
Always channel surfing cause
Your brain it isn't working
When you're looking for
That moment just remember
Don't look
Don't stray
Don't talk it over
No time
No way
Listen to me I'm cold sober
You're just out there
Taunting cobras
Hey you
Who's gonna warn you
When it's something
You don't want to know
Don't think
It won't deform you
Twist your mind
Then let it go
Boy you
Ain't seen nothing yet
It's a long train of regret
Puppets get
No second chance
Pull that string
They gotta dance
Welcome to the prison
Let me tell ya
What you're missing
I've been coming here
For nearly a year
Out there was my corner
'Till I came in for a water
Mixed with whiskey
And a chaser of
Sideways glances
Don't look
Don't stray
Don't talk it over
No time
No way
Listen to me I'm cold sober
You're just out there
Taunting cobras
Don't look
Don't stray
Don't talk it over
No time
No way
Listen to me I'm cold sober
You're just out there
Taunting cobras
02 Handful of Rain (05:00)
The night is growing dark
From somewhere deep within
It shelters like an ark
That always takes you in
The barmaid walks on over
And pours another round
For a lost soul at the corner
Who prays he's never found
And the mind goes numb
Until it's feeling no pain
And the soul cries out
For a handful of rain
Wash your women
In your Whiskey
When your future�s
In the past
And your staring
Up at heaven
From the bottom
Of a glass
And you need some insulation
From the years you've
Had and lost
And you feel the perspiration
As you're adding up the cost
And the night rolls on
Like a slow moving train
And the soul cries out
There's a land beyond the living
There's a land beyond the dead
If it's true that God�s forgiving
Of the lives that we had led
In the distance there's a thunder
And the air is thick and warm
And the patrons watch with wonder
The approaching of the storm
And the night rolls on
Like a slow moving train
And the soul cries out
For a handful of rain
There's an old man in the corner
And he's smoking all the time
An the smoke is drifting upward and it's
Twisting in my
Twisting in my
Mind
In my mind
The whiskey�s getting deeper
And I use it like a moat
There's a blues man in the distance and he's
Lost inside his
Note
His note
The night is growing dark
From somewhere deep within
It shelters like an ark
That always takes you in
And the night rolls on
Like a slow moving train
And the soul cries out
For an handful of rain
03 Chance (07:49)
He was standing all alone
Trying to find the words to say
When every prayer he ever prayed was gone
And the dreams he's never owned
Are still safely tucked away
Until tomorrow he just carries on
Carries on
Carries on
Carries on
See the devil on the streets at night
See him running in the pouring rain
See him grinning 'neath a twisted light
I'll be back again
See the people standing in a row
See them nodding like a field of grain
No one sees the sickle though
Coming 'cross the plain
And this he knows, if nothing more
That waiting in the dark like destiny
Are those who kiss the dogs of war
And there is no tomorrow, no tomorrow
Take a chance
Take a, take a chance yeah
See the devil he is so intense
See the devil go and change his name
What's the going price of innocence
It can't be the same
Is it dark when the moon is down
Is it dark with a single flame
If there's glass falling all around
I am not to blame
And this he knows, if nothing more
That waiting in the dark like destiny
Are those who kiss the dogs of war
And there is no tomorrow, no tomorrow
Take a chance
Take a, take a chance yeah
Take a chance
Take a, take a chance oh yeah
Burn the night away
Burn the night away
Burn the night...
Pictures at an exhibition
Played as he stood
In his trance
Staring at his inhibitions
All the time believing
That it now came down to nothing but this chance
Chance
Chance
Chance
I fear you
Your silence
Your blindness
See what you want to see
In darkness
One kindness
One moment
Tell me what you believe
I believe in nothing
Never really had to
In regards to your life
Rumors that are not true
Who's defending evil
Surely never I
Who would be the witness
Should you chance to die
Father can you hear me
This is not how it was meant to be
I am safe and so are you
As for the other's destiny
(simultaneously - add a new stanza each time
throughand continue as a round)
Father can you hear me
This is not how it was meant to be
I am safe and so are you
As for the other's destiny
I believe that situations
All depend on circumstance
Look away
Look away
Pictures at an exhibition
Played as he stood
In his trance
Staring at his inhibitions
All the time believing
That it now came down to nothing but this chance
Chance
Chance
Chance
05 Castles Burning (04:38)
In the dark and bleeding
With the shadows seething
There he stands alone
Fools and faith conspire
Questions of desire
That they never owned
Kings without their armor
Men without their honor
Spit out desecration
Pieces of a nation
Buried in the ground
Screams without a sound
Burn the castle down
In the end the children cried
That the jackal surely lied
When he said please listen all
Do not look behind these walls
Coffins drowned in roses
And the war he chose is
Fought inside the mind
Death becomes compelling
When the soul's for selling
And the world is blind
In the maze he wanders
Looks about and ponders
shadows mock and taunt him
And the ghosts that haunt him
Chain him to the ground
Screams without a sound
Burn the castle down
In the end the children cried
That the jackal surely lied
When he said please listen all
Do not look behind these walls
And does the pendulum toll
Against the side of the soul
When he feels the final moment is near
Do you rage 'gainst the dark
Try to re-write the part
Turn around and face what you fear
What you fear
He's seen it all before
Close your eyes and close the door
And the dreams that nights embrace
Slowly leave without a trace
07 Watching You Fall (05:20)
There in the dark
There's a child and she's waiting
Lost in the maze of a fait accompli
Is it a crime to be just hesitating
While we're pretending that we never see
On a tv mounted on the wall
From this distance I can see it all
And I've been out here watching you
Watching you fall
Is there a trick to the art of not feeling
Safe in our world while another's child bleeds
Praying that God won't demand a redealing
Of cards we have held and pretend you don't need
Don't need
On a tv mounted on the wall
From this distance
I can see it all
And I've been out here
Watching you
Watching you fall
Better not think about it
Anytime we'll start to doubt it
Christ has risen
Keep him hidden
God forbid he sees
It's not that we lack the vision
Only just a quick desision
Who will blame us, rules restrain us
It's all in history
So close my eyes and pretend I am sleeping
Avoiding the chance that you'll visit my dreams
On a tv mounted on the wall
From this distance I can see it all
And I've been out here watching you Watching you,
watching you, watching you Watching you fall yeah yeah
saludes a todos mis amigos
caro te quiero muchisisimo
09 Symmetry (05:04)
So would you tell me now
Are life and death a symmetry
Balanced on scales, either side chosen
And could these moments balance out against eternity
Promise inferred, words never spoken
My life is burning
Could you read by the light
Letters I've written, never to follow
Poets and madmen all defy reason
Still in my mind I know
I want to live my life with you
Dying hard
Play the whole hand 'til it's through
Dying hard
Dying hard
Dying hard
Dying hard
And in your arctic night
You contemplate eternity
Walking on water
Frozen in silence
And in that moment would you
Turn around and turn to me
Laughing away night's darker tyrants
My life is burning
Could you read by the light
Letters I've written, never to follow
Poets and madmen all defy reason
Still in my mind I know
I want to live my life with you
Dying hard
Play the whole hand 'til it's through
Dying hard
Dying hard
Dying hard
Dying hard
Some nights I spend alone inside my head
But it's better than losing it
And if you want to turn it all around
It's your life you're choosing it
I want to live my life with you
Dying hard
Play the whole hand 'til it's through
Dying hard
Dying hard
Dying hard
Dying hard
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Other reviews
By the x factor
Handful Of Rain is undoubtedly the band’s most introspective album, full of unanswered questions about Criss’s death.
Alone You Breathe is a tear-jerking piece to the nth degree, a perfect piece where everyone does their impeccable work.
