Dead Winter Dead

Dead Winter Dead, the ninth album, came out first in Japan, on 20 September 1995 from Zero Corporation (XRCN-1249). The European edition on Concrete (Edel) entered the German chart on 16 October, and Atlantic released it in the United States on 24 October (82850-2). It is a rock opera set in Sarajevo during the Bosnian war, with story and words by Paul O'Neill: a stone gargoyle on a thousand-year-old church, Serdjan, a young Serb who joins a militia, Katrina, a young Muslim girl who takes up arms, and an old cellist who plays Mozart and Beethoven every night on the ruins of a fountain, their stories meeting on Christmas Eve, as the official site's synopsis tells it. The credits carry Mikhail Evstafiev's photograph of Vedran Smailović, the Cellist of Sarajevo. Chris Caffery came back and Al Pitrelli, who had played with Alice Cooper, joined, giving the band two guitarists; the old official FAQ says Pitrelli was brought in because the management and Atlantic wanted a well-known name. Jeff Plate played drums. Jon Oliva took part on keyboards and vocals and sings lead on "I Am" and "Doesn't Matter Anyway", as AllMusic notes, and "Mozart and Madness" is built on Mozart's Symphony No. 25, according to the FAQ. The instrumental "Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24)", written by Oliva, O'Neill and Bob Kinkel, unexpectedly began getting played on American radio over the 1995 holiday season and became the biggest hit of the band's career, the official site says; the members went on to build Trans-Siberian Orchestra around it. The album reached number 18 on Billboard's Heatseekers chart and number 80 in Germany. The Japanese edition joins "Overture" and "Memory" to the songs beside them and adds "D.T. Jesus", the early form of "Jesus Saves", as a bonus track. The running order here is the American CD's as printed.