SAVATAGE released their fourth album, "Hall of the Mountain King," on September 28th, 1987, through Atlantic Records, and it changed the band permanently. Paul O'Neill had been assigned to them after the commercially misjudged "Fight for the Rock," and he produced this record at the Record Plant in New York while steering the Florida group toward the conceptual, orchestral approach that would define the rest of their career and eventually produce TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA. "Prelude to Madness" arranges Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King" and quotes Holst's "Mars, the Bringer of War" in its intro. Jon Oliva's voice is at its most commanding and his brother Criss's guitar work has never been bettered. It reached number 116 on the Billboard 200 and remains the album most SAVATAGE listeners name first.
