Dead Winter Dead came out October 24, 1995 and I purchased it on December 10, 1995 at The Last Unicorn in New Hartford, New York. My first semester of college drew to a close and I dealt with two lingering things that represented the “magic” of high school. And I killed that magic with my own hands within one month. First, I sent a naive, “confess all my feelings” letter to the girl I liked since mid-11th grade and who now went to the same college as me. There had always been an unspoken attraction and off-and-on Much Ado About Nothing friendship between us, but I think it continued that way because our interactions were full of mystery and intrigue. We didn’t quite know what the other was feeling, and that gave our friendship a delightful yet frustrating tension. With my letter, I killed the mystery and intrigue, ending the friendship and my almost two years of feelings. She treated me with emotional distance throughout the rest of college, and thus I terminated a great source of joy. I had really liked her. Second, I wrote my friend Todd a letter and chewed him out in an untactful, self-righteous, unempathetic way for some unresolved things that had happened during the summer after high school. Along with the girl I liked, Todd helped define and shape many of my most magical high school moments. On January 6, 1996, he sent me a letter that effectively ended our friendship. Although we did reconcile soon afterward, that letter forever ended our high school era friendship. In addition, many of my high school friends were away at college and only returned for a brief spell during the winter. When I review some of my Top 10 albums, we’ll see that in high school I wanted to both feel like an outcast and yet have the acceptance of several “cool” people to give my personality legitimacy. I wanted to become “accepted” while staying uncompromising to my own intellect and humor. That stupid goal fell apart during my freshman year winter break, and I found myself in January 1996 with only a handful of friends left behind in the wake of my self-righteous letter writing, conversations, and delusions. They weren’t my original “core” high school friends, and I felt deflated and socially disoriented. However, I still wanted (and needed) a social life, so I continued to do things - at first on autopilot but then with an increasing sense of newfound joy and gratefulness.
Dead Winter Dead absolutely defines the winter of 1996 in so many ways. Edge of Thorns and Handful of Rain were definitive high school albums, and so Dead Winter Dead continued Savatage’s narrative thread into college. Their new direction was fresh and intriguing, unlike anything else they produced before. Of course, in hindsight we see Dead Winter Dead as essentially the first unofficial Trans-Siberian Orchestra album. I still remember experiencing a bizarre moment on Christmas Eve 1996 when the video for “Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24” played on TV. My family was amazed and awestruck by Savatage without knowing or caring that it was an obscure heavy metal band that shaped my high school life on a deeply personal level. Like Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Dead Winter Dead is melodramatic, Broadway-esque, over the top, and showy - combining story, spectacle, and metal in unprecedented yet not very innovative ways. But that lack of innovation and prog metal geekiness is also what I liked about it and why it helped define that winter of 1996. Dead Winter Dead became a favorite album of my friend Frank, and its music takes me back to his family’s house during that winter. After losing my crush of two years, my most magical high school friend, and my core friends to college, Frank would call me up. Invite me over. Pick me up. And we’d hang. While a certain pattern of events did exist, I never quite knew what was going to happen once I got there. A bunch of us might go to Carmella’s or Symeon’s. Watch movies like Get Shorty or anime. Crack up over episodes of Sailor Moon. Play board games like Jump the Train. Play video games, talk all night, and drink coffee. And no matter how late, how cold, how snowy, Frank would bundle up, warm up a car, scrape ice and snow off the windshield, and take me home during those dead winter nights with the mysterious surrounding rural landscape so quiet around us. These visits and rituals were like social comfort food. They were the antithesis of my status seeking or feelings of high school self-importance. They took place in a humble environment that exuded fun, warmth, creativity, and eclectic hobbies and interests. Looking back almost 20 years later, I realize that these hangouts not only got me through some difficult wounds that killed my high school era forever but they also pointed a way toward my future.
At age 18, I didn’t learn a couple of key lessons permanently, but I did receive two big gut punches that resonated through the last two decades. One, predating my discovery of Neil Young’s insight about finding more interesting people in the ditch rather than in the middle of the road, I found I enjoyed my time at Frank’s with the eccentric people who showed up more than I did with the cool or popular folks. Two, I realized creatively that it satisfied me more to explore alternative creative paths with like-minded folks. It’s not a coincidence that my time at Frank’s during these years eventually planted seeds that led to pivotal life decisions such as taking Scott MacDonald’s film courses at Utica College, becoming an English major to explore the nooks and crannies of classic literature, and my odd decisions in Atlanta that have allowed me to creatively carve out a career through a series of off-the-radar-screen intense life experiences. For the first time, Frank and the social gatherings at his house allowed me to realize that my high school script of caustic humor, self-pity, depression, and barely hidden obvious desire to be accepted by “cool kids” wasn’t going to work moving forward. I didn’t have a new life script yet, but I began to rewrite it from scratch through the attic-like atmosphere at Frank’s - sifting through odd board games, odd anime, odd conversations, odd late night hangout spots, and (yes) odd people to begin constructing a new me. Okay, so here I am deep in paragraph three having barely mentioned Dead Winter Dead. The album is absolutely representative of all these things I discussed. It captures the feel of winter 1996 - quite literally in the album title. It’s metal, but geeky metal. While it’s about a real event (the Bosnian War), it feels like video game fantasy metal. Its voice and tone remind me of playing Magic: The Gathering or looking at the Brian Lumley books on Frank’s shelf. The music contains a strident seriousness that pervaded the atmosphere of Frank’s house no matter how much humor got thrown into the air. And that seriousness also contained a sincere hope of desiring honest-to-goodness happiness despite darkness. Most of us weren’t happy people during that time. We were high school outcasts, the forgotten and the reviled. We hurt from rejection, exclusion, and low social status - and, yes, we often lashed out at each other (directly and indirectly) despite needing each other socially. Yet, we wanted simple things: a girlfriend, friends to regularly hang out with, people who appreciated our creative work, the ability to chase and explore our dreams and interests in college, and to be understood by others. I sense those things throughout Dead Winter Dead in songs like “This Is the Time” (which made me feel like winter 1996 was the time to embrace my destiny with a clean slate), “This Isn’t What We Meant” (reflecting my hopelessness with lines like “and every prayer we pray at night has somehow lost its meaning”), and “Not What You See.” That last song really struck a chord with me and summarized everything. I felt that people saw me in a certain way - awkward, ugly, and unhip - and I wasn’t what they saw. These lines gave me hope in the midst of that dark winter:
No life's so short that it never learns
No flame so small that it never burns
No page so sure that it never turns
I could move forward. Despite my humble origins and watching other more attractive, intelligent people getting a seemingly unfair head start, I found that my life, my dreams, and my future still had potential and meaning - even if I was the latest of bloomers. Life continued after high school, after 1995, after the loss of my crush, after the loss of a friend. And as Dead Winter Dead played in the background on many of those winter nights, I felt like I’d found another home amidst the Magic: The Gathering cards on the table in the dining room, cats running around here and there, a mug of coffee in hand that had just percolated on the stove, chatter and laughter constant in the air, the heat whirring from somewhere softening the air with warmth, and the cold, dark winter snow surrounding us outside in a rural landscape - the land that was dead winter dead indeed. In that humble abode in that humble hometown so far from civilization, I found friends, camaraderie, coffee, and comfort. Life may have lost the meaning I wanted it to have in high school, but I began to understand on those winter nights that life perhaps was more fun if I quit controlling the whole damn thing and started to allow other people to co-create life with me. That lesson which is still so important to me today originates in that house and with the music of Dead Winter Dead.
