Description
2020 release on black vinyl
Vocalist Jon Oliva and guitarist/bassist Chris Caffery of Florida-based band, Savatage celebrate their heavy metal roots with Doctor Butcher, a side project with Seven Witches drummer, John Osborn. Oliva and Cafferty were at a critical point in their careers when they launched Doctor Butcher. Their band, Savatage, had yet to regroup following the automobile death of Oliva’s brother and founding guitarist, Criss, in 1993. Caffery, who had been a founding member of German band, Metalium, joined Savatage in 1990, helping to record one of the group’s best albums, ‘Gutter Ballet’. The Doctor Butcher project and the results definitely constitute a different kind of beast. Clearly eager to experiment following years of regimented songwriting for his former band, Oliva collaborated with Caffery on an unpredictable, at times quite structurally skittish, collection of skewed heavy metal, to the degree that it’s sometimes hard to figure out if the likes of ‘Reach Out and Torment Someone’, ‘Innocent Victim’ and ‘I Hate, You Hate, We All Hate!!’ are intentionally unruly, or simply not quite finished. Knowing Oliva’s history makes it hard to seriously consider the latter possibility, but there are also little recommending positively leaden excursions — part plodding mindless riffs, part sweet and evocative melodies — like ‘Season of the Witch’ and ‘The Chair’. Far better, and even immediate at times, are the wonderfully moody ‘Lost in the Dark’, the riff-tastic ‘All for One, None for All’, the evocative, Caffery-orchestrated interlude ‘Juice’, and leadoff track ‘Don’t Talk to Me’, with its viciously spat chorus. And even though it contains another confusing patchwork of somewhat incongruent ideas, ‘The Picture’s Wild’ makes for an inspired and interesting patchwork nonetheless. Having said all that, some cynics may still view Doctor Butcher as a convenient repository for sub-Savatage material, but they’d only have a point inasmuch as Oliva’s voice is almost impossible to separate from that hallowed American metal institution — for if heard in a historical vacuum, the music is still interesting enough to speak for itself.
Track list:
1. The Altar
2. Don’t Talk To Me
3. Seasons Of The Witch
4. Reach Out And Torment Someone
5. Juice
6. The Chair
7. Innocent Victim
8. The Pictures Wild
9. Lost In The Dark
10. I Hate, You Hate…We All Hate
11. All For One None For All