Jesus in this story, but it's hard not to feel like the Floridians are projecting here, that this is somehow about their own addictions and coping with the fact that they just weren't seeing the critical and financial success they had deserved (and they did, with Hall of the Mountain King and Gutter Ballet). Sure, there are some touching moments for our protagonist D.T. All Streets really ever amounts to is 'Gutter Ballet' expanded outwards into nearly 70 minutes of inconsistent material, some decent and some swill. I already got just about all I need, or could ever desire of Savatage performing this transparent, sentimental 'sorry for myself' pandering through tracks like 'Gutter Ballet' or 'When the Crowds are Gone'. To be fair, this is by no means an awful album, and it largely continues the legacy of its predecessor Gutter Ballet, but therein also lies my primary issue. They wrote up a bunch of characters and a sequence of revelations and events that would create the same level of drama you'd find in an old Broadway show, so of course it's set in the stereotypical New York City location with a story of drug dealers, poverty, and redemption. While there were certainly some recurrent themes on prior efforts, this is the first case of an actual, straight narrative coursing through. Streets was the first unified concept album from Savatage, to be later followed up by titles like Dead Winter Dead and Wake of Magellan.

Rock opera albums