Zak Stevens (Savatage, Archon Angel, Trans-Siberian Orchestra) Interview

The last time we interviewed a member of Savatage, it singlehandedly broke the internet. It also made us supposed enemies of many of the big metal news outlets, albeit unintentionally. Three years later and I have no regrets. I am forever grateful to Jon Oliva and the Savatage/TSO camp for taking a “Chance” on me. If it weren’t for that interview, odds are many of you would’ve never discovered this little webzine that could in the first place. It’s in this spirit that I’m honored to present to you an enthusiastic, hour-long conversation with Oliva’s vocal successor, Zak Stevens. In this new interview, Stevens and I don’t just discuss the current state of Savatage (There may be an update…), but also his excellent new project, Archon Angel, who ALL of you should check out. So sit back and relax as we yet again balance our dreams upon the edge of thorns.

Greetings Zak and welcome to Defenders of the Faith! How are you doing today?

Zak Stevens: Great, Joe! Thank you so much! I appreciate the intro. Yes, Archon Angel is the newest band and we got a new record coming out April 14. Thank you so much for talking to me about it.

Absolutely! I know you’re just a few months off of another extensive trek with the juggernaut that is TSO. How did that tour go?

ZS: Well that went great. They’ve all been good. I’ve been out with them touring since 2015, doing those winter tours. They’ve been going really good. Everybody’s done an amazing job, especially since we lost our boss in 2017, with the passing of Paul O’Neill. It was very shaky. You’re talking about a guy who had his hands on everything, one of those managers/owners/producers/creators, if you will. No matter what little thing went on, he went, “Alright, if you can’t make a decision, I’ll make a decision on that.” He was involved in everything. When you lose somebody like that, especially our long time producer in Savatage, it was super sad.

It’s a tribute to everybody in the band, all 32 band members, the management, the crews, the vendors that we hire for sound, lighting, automation, pyro. It took every single one of them. Getting through that period was the toughest thing that we’ve seen by far. Everybody pulled together and kept it together. We’ve found out that not only can we just go play; we can start taking shows to the next level. When you lose somebody like Paul, who was a genius, it takes everybody at that point. You’ll never replace him, but it takes everybody to come onboard after that and keep things rolling.

And you’ve done a great job at that. Can you give a little background on how Archon Angel came to be? I know both you and founding guitarist Aldo Lonobile…I hope I’m saying his name right.

ZS: Lo-no-be-lay! I don’t know Italian that well, but I think I’ve figured that one out. Actually, I got help by going in an Italian restaurant in Florida of all places. The guy had the same last name. He goes, “You know what? It’s Lo-no-be-lay.” And I said, “Thank you sir. You’ve set me on the path to be able to pronounce my producer and guitarist’s name correctly!” So that’s how you say it.

I know you two worked together on Timo Tolkki’s Avalon project. How did things develop from there?

ZS: Yeah, that was really the first time Aldo contacted me, for Timo’s project. He was writing with Timo and producing that for Frontiers. It really sounded great. I was really excited to work on that. I think those are great songs. I was super excited. Then, after that, he said, “Since those turned out good, my bosses over here at Frontiers wanna see if you wanna do a series of records. We just gotta come up with a name and I can produce that too. We can write together.” I said, “Yeah, let’s do that!”

I was living in Michigan at the time and I remember it was really cold. I was walking all around out there like a fool with my wife. I go, “Hey, I just got hit up by Aldo again to come up with something.” We were walking around and by the time we got done with the walk, my wife’s like, “Archon Angel.” “What was that again?” “Oh, you don’t know what an archon is?” “Uhhh, not really. Fill me in!” It was quite complicated, but she came up with the name and she also writes all the lyrics, my wife Catherine. She’s a musician as well, so that was the first way we could sort of work together on something that we could put out there and have released all over the world, so that was really cool. There’s a real chemistry there.

Basically, what it is is they’re concept albums and they have to do with the 2nd century, somewhat Christian, somewhat pre-Christian religion of Gnosticism. In that religion, you don’t have one overpowering god who creates everything like in a lot of religions that we know today. It took elements from pre-Christianity, being that it was only the 2nd century A.D. Basically, you’ve got some lesser divinities, if you will, that control things, but it’s not like one encompassing god.

You’ve got somebody like a demiurge, who’s the guy who created the earth, but isn’t so super powerful. From what I’ve read, he’s just there after creation. There’s also the gnosis, who is another lesser divinity who reports to him (the demiurge). As far as I understand that, he’s in control of esoteric knowledge. Any knowledge that humans can get is controlled by this gnosis, with a “g”. The “g” is silent *laughs*. And then, Christ in this would report to him (the gnosis), and his main existence objective is he’s the only one that can provide redemption of the human spirit.

Now working for him (Christ) are these guys who would include the archon, which is a winged, strong character like you would see on our album covers. What he does is he is the only way that people on earth would be able to communicate with the gods that we’re speaking about. If you’re just a person on earth, you’d have to go, “Man, I’d like to get a message up there to the higher divinities. However, it can only be taken by the archon.” And you have to get on your phone and dial ARCHON-811 *laughs*. No, I don’t know that last part.

What we’re doing with these records is taking this fictitious concept of the archon and making each song a story in the archon’s life. But we’re breaking the archon into modern times. He can help us out with all the problems that we got going on. Obviously, we got multiple problems. If you’re looking for problems, you can find one. If you’re looking on the positive side, you can be positive as well. I try to be positive and all that, but still, there’s obvious things that he can help us out with. If you have an adversary that you think wants to take you to war or something, he can come in between, or maybe even help with natural disasters or whatever. He’s got the power to help us.

That’s where the concept is with these albums. It’s wild, but at least it gives us something to base the inspiration for writing on. But really, the stories of the archon, since there’s not really an archon as far as I know; I haven’t seen one landing downtown anytime in the last week or so, but I will tell you that we get stories for his life through just regular, everyday people that we meet, who might have a wild tale of something that just doesn’t fit with what we’d call normal life.

It could be maybe a soldier or someone that’s been in combat. Most people don’t see that. It can be superhuman stories coming from regular, everyday people like us. We’ll meet people and they’ll tell us about themselves and we’ll go, “That right there is a story for the archon.” And then, my wife will take that because she writes the lyrics. She’s really good on picking up on those inspirational things. That’s the way it works for the concept and the lyrics. For making the records, we have our own process. Obviously, I record the vocals here in South Carolina where I live, and set the tracks to Italy. Everybody else in the band is from Italy. It’s about the same as you do everything these days: Record your tracks somewhere and send them away.

Unless you got a band that everybody’s living in town, which would be fantastic, but that’s more lucky these days. Or maybe you might be high school friends. It’s hard to get that. As I get older, I go, “Man, these band members are coming from very far away.” But luckily, due to technology…even the guys in Savatage, we don’t live in the same states, so we would have to do a number of things like that as well. I guess in the case of Savatage, we could probably get everybody down into the same studio, but that’s a little bit more of a special situation right there. Everything else, especially if you’re dealing with Europe and America, you’re recording in your home studios.

I appreciate you diving into the concept behind the band and the records, because I was actually going to ask you about that.

ZS: Right on!

What did Archon Angel set out to achieve with this album and in what ways does it expand upon the debut, Fallen?

ZS: Well, we didn’t have any specific meetings and say, “Hey, the first record did this. Now let’s do this on the second record.” We had a few things leftover song-wise that didn’t make the cut for the first album, but we had pieces, so you can’t really count that. We had a couple of full songs, but we were like, “Nah, that’s not really us.” We usually go for having 14 or 16 songs to choose from, and cut it down to 10 or 11. I think it’s been 11 songs on each album so far.

We didn’t really have anything specific in mind. I told Aldo as soon as he can start sending the song ideas to me, the better. We got done tracking album 2 here, also called II, imagine that, in September of 2022. The way it works with Frontiers is get done one year and sometime in the next year it comes out. I started getting stuff from him in February, which was good, because that gave us a lot of time. I think that we had something like 16 songs on the slate and chopped it down to 11.

Then, we were able to use a piece that was only a single riff from the last one, which was “Lake of Fire”. I think that’s more prog than a lot of things on this new record. In my opinion, there was more of what you would call “prog” on the first record, with the epic, longer songs and some of the time signatures being more wacky; there was some pretty cool time signature changes on this record too, but this one came out a bit heavier from what I can hear. It’s a little bit more straight out rockin’, pounding away, whereas the first one was a little more prog on the fringes.

To me, a song like the single, “Fallen”, on the first album, that sounds very inspired by Savatage. I knew that was gonna happen because Aldo told me straight away…I think he’s 15 or 16 years younger than me. Anyway, he’s super inspired by Savatage, so I said, “Well that’s cool!” He was going on saying, “I’m a huge fan. Working with you means so much.” “Wow, that’s awesome.” I knew there was gonna be some. Maybe on this record I hear some here and there, but it’s not quite as prevalent. I think he got to the point where he’s good at diving in personally, considering all the writers involved.

I just do vocal melodies and a few lyrics here and there, just to smooth out stuff or to, as I call, put the cherries on top. I then give feedback on arrangements here or there, so I’m involved. My wife’s on lyrics, so that’s 2. Of course, Aldo with the majority of the compositions, Then we got Alessandro Del Vecchio. He’s a writer who contributed on the first and a little bit on the second. We’ve got a synth player who does the synth arrangements, Antonio Agate. He’s contributed even more on this album, so there’s 5. And guess what? Then, here comes Chris Caffery, contributing on the song “Quicksand”!

Here we are, for the first time since Circle II Circle. Chris comes in and says, “Hey!” He was busy working with Aldo at the same time. As Aldo’s compiling music for this album, he’s producing Chris in Spirits of Fire. Of course, here comes the small family again. Chris said, “Let me do one for Archon Angel.” He said, “Yeah, go ahead and send one.” Now that’s 6. That to me, that’s cool. I’ve never been involved in anything that’s had up to 6 writers. Even Savatage was mostly Jon Oliva and Paul O’Neill; Criss Oliva too before he passed away. That was the writing team.

Chris Caffery contributed to some stuff too here and there, and so did I, a couple of vocal melodies here and there. But when you got people like Paul O’Neill doing lyrics and melodies, and Jon Oliva doing vocals and writing music, I just wanted to come in here and do my part, you know what I mean *laughs*? It’s well covered at that point. I’m not gonna be forcing myself on that situation. A lot of it is just knowing where your spot is and it makes for a better overall effort. There’s more room in something like this for me, even though now I’m just like, let me do what I specialize in, which is singing. I’ll lend my producer ear to stuff. That’s where I’m at right now with Archon Angel. I think it’s better when you get more people contributing. You can take the best of what they got and that’s what you get right here in Archon Angel. You get multiple writers.

Right, and personally, I’m just thrilled to see the project still going. Being a Frontiers fan, there’s been so many supergroups who I would’ve loved to have seen record second albums who, for whatever circumstance or another, didn’t. I remember reviewing the first Archon Angel album in 2020 and hoping this would turn into a full blown band. With 5 regular collaborators and the opportunity for more, it looks like it’s grown into something even larger. This is a rather intriguing situation you’re in.

ZS: Yeah! I like it. It has the potential to expand in multiple directions. With that many people involved, you really can get some different stuff happening all the time. Whereas…this doesn’t happen with Jon Oliva. You know that thing where it’s like, “I’m spinning my wheels a little bit.”? That never happens with Jon. I know with somebody like me, if it was just me by myself, by the second or third record, I’d be like, “I think the well is running dry.” With this, I got stuff coming at me all the time. To me, just to keep up with it is a challenge, so I like that. I really see it as a positive these days. With the multiple writers and everything, great points you hit on.

When writing and playing with Aldo, in what ways does he compare or contrast to other guitarists you’ve collaborated with like Al Pitrelli, Chris Caffery, or the late great Criss Oliva?

ZS: The way I look at that kind of thing…these are all standalone guys. Nobody’s gonna be quite like each of them *laughs*. Even Aldo, he’s amazing. His playing, people tell me from time to time, “I’m hearing a little bit of Criss Oliva. That’s what Criss would’ve done right there.” Who knows, but it’s good to get the compliment. No doubt about it, Aldo, his guitar playing is amazing. I love it. He’s really super cool. He’s so open. Even if I hear a riff and I go, “Man, the demo over here had this riff.” He’ll go, “Oh, I forgot about it! Let me go check that out.” He’ll go look. “You’re right! That is good!” And he’ll just put it on the record. He’s totally open to suggestions and stuff like that, a really, really cool, laidback guy.

I don’t know. He’s quite different. I don’t know if I can really compare him so much to Al, because Al’s got more, to me, that real blues…oh man. Al’s got everything. He comes from Aerosmith and Megadeth. He’s got a little bit of everything like that. He might have a little bit more blue and stuff, but Aldo’s got a little bit of that too. That’s a great question. It’s so hard for me as not being a guitar player to really compare and contrast *laughs*. I know that he really loved Criss Oliva, so he does have some nuances there that are inspired from him. Caffery, as well, does that same thing.

I think Aldo can stand on his own, period, but that’s a great question. I think a little bit is taken from all of them because he studies those guys. It depends on what the guitar player is studying. Aldo takes a little piece from everywhere. He’s jazz. He’s blues. He’s metal. He’s got riffs from everywhere because he’s just delved into all kinds of different music. Chris is expanding his horizons too. He plays big band stuff with a polka band on the side. All this matters and it makes you better. Who would even know the full extent of where got his riffs from? I know in his own writing, he covers the metal and prog and rock spectrum completely.

Yes, he definitely hits all those and then some on this album. Which I forgot to mention that I did get to hear it a little bit early. I love it as much as the debut.

ZS: Why thank you so much Joe! I appreciate it! I’ve got a few more favorite songs on this one than even the first one, so I guess that’s a good sign. I think a few of them stick out here or there. After you’ve recorded so much music, it becomes sort of a whirlwind. You really have to take the time to put the thing on, put your headphones on, and sit down and listen to each song. Looking at a track list for me, I think I remember stuff, but not really. You really have to sit down and give it a good listen. I appreciate that.

Anytime! I want to talk a bit about the first single off this album, “Fortress”. How did this song come to be and how does it relate to the overall theme of this album?

ZS: I believe, in looking at the lyrics and everything, this is the archon who has come from somebody on the first album who didn’t even really want to be the archon, but the divinities assigned it to him. It’s like, “You are chosen to become the archon!” “What?!” He’s sitting there drinking a bear, toking a fatty. He was actually on drugs and stuff on the first album! He was just a guy who had a lot of money. He was an entrepreneur, a regular guy who had a lot of money, but he was getting fucked up a lot.

He was riding around in his Ferrari, or some very expensive sportscar, and doing dangerous things. He was getting too much of a buzz and going at high speeds and going, “I don’t care anymore man. I’m gonna run this thing into a wall.” Then, all of a sudden from the heavens, “Hold up! You’re going to be the next archon!” “Me? I’m at the worst spot of my life that I could ever be!” “No, trust us. You’re good to go. Here’s some wings.” So he said no, but he soon realized he didn’t have a choice. “Wow, I’ve got special powers!” Special powers that he didn’t know he had that they’re tapping into.

He had to go through that whole process of acceptance. “No, I don’t want it. That’s OK. Pass. I’d rather have a vodka drink and drive at high speed. Sorry, I don’t need that.” “You don’t have a choice.” Well, you have to go through that whole thing: Acceptance and trying it and being like, “I hate this.” Then realizing, slowly over time, your powers are real. You’re now trying to harness them and getting a little more successful at that. That’s where the first album landed.

Now, he’s comfortable in his new powers. He’s accepting the roles and being sent down to take care of several issues. Now, he has basically made himself a castle that he is living in, a “Fortress”. He’s going through those things like, “I think I’m cool. I still want to be isolated.” He has a tendency for isolation, but now he has this female that he sort of knows he has human feelings for. It’s not a female archon. It’s a regular female human who has made him feel things that he didn’t know he was supposed to feel.

“I thought I was just supposed to be some kind of divinity archon. I didn’t know that I still had these vulnerable human feelings.” Now he’s trying to isolate himself inside his fortress so he doesn’t get cut like a knife. So he doesn’t want to be too vulnerable to love or whatever. This is him trying to stack himself up in the castle. That’s why we shot the video on the river, because the castle would be on a river. That was near my house over here. What’s funny is they shot their part of the video in Italy and I shot mine here in my town. It looks like the same place!

I was going to ask about that because I was watching the video and thinking, “Man, did they fly Zak out to Italy or vice versa?”

ZS: We don’t have that kind of budget *laughs*! We still gotta be smart. Even the archon knows that! But I’m looking at what they did thinking, that director there, he was really good. He picked a place that looked so similar. He said, “Do yours first so we can have something to match.” That was the secret right there. So I did all mine, and my audio engineer, Jamie, who records all the vocal tracks, he’s actually the videographer there too. He’s an audio engineer and also a videographer, so I’m basically doing all my videos with him. The second video that we just released, “Afterburn”, that was shot by Jamie too in the studios, indoors versus outdoors. But yeah, that’s where the archon is in the story with “Fortress”, so that’s it for that song.

Something like “Afterburn” comes after he’s had to do a couple of special missions and he’s kind of shaken up. “I just had to save the world twice this week. I need a beer!” Who knows? I try to do the best I can. I don’t have all the lyrics in front of me right now, but I know the process when my wife is writing them. She’s telling me what it’s going to be about and I get to look at them quite a lot when I’m recording, so I pay attention and usurp what I can from them when I’m working on it. But yeah, that’s the story behind “Fortress”.

A lot of your music, not just with Archon Angel, but Savatage and Circle II Circle as well, is conceptual or share an overarching them. For you, as a fan and an artist, what makes a successful concept album?

ZS: If the story can inspire the artist, that’s the most important thing. You’re right, I’ve been involved in things that share concepts and things like that, even multiple concepts. In Savatage, a record like The Wake of Magellan, people don’t realize there’s 5 different concepts in 1. Paul O’Neill was just telling political stories from all around the world. We were coming off Dead Winter Dead, which had one central concept: The breakup of the former Yugoslavia and the war in ’95, and the war where, after that war, Yugoslavia broke up into 8 different separate countries.

That was easy to stick to one central theme and then go off into stories on the people involved in it. For me, that’s more coherent. Something like Wake of Magellan, people don’t know that I know at least 4 stories in that, which a lot of people don’t even know unless you’re sitting there with the producer and he’s telling you, “Look at this article. I’m gonna take this article and make this part of it.” I think what’s more important is what does the concept do for inspiration of the artists involved? That’s gonna make the better music, not so much who can come up with the better story.

We weren’t trying to come up with the #1 concept of all time with this. We were just trying to come up with something that gives us endless inspiration, and that you can think about and go, “Oh, this is what the archon does next!” It’s something as simple as that. Or if you met someone who told you a superhuman story that you didn’t realize about somebody until you talked to them, that’s why we talk to everybody. Everybody’s got a story to tell. You never know when a story’s gonna hit you like, “Oh my God! How does anybody do that in a lifetime?!” Those kinds of things make it into the album.

People might think this archon thing is way too complicated, which it is, admittedly so. It’s too complicated to become the world’s #1 voted concept, which we weren’t trying to do anyway. I don’t think it’s so much about that as much as it’s about what the concept can bring and what inspiration can that bring to the writers? As far as The Wake of Magellan goes, just for your info, we had the opening track about a guy who’s on a tanker somewhere. I don’t know if it was North Korea or somewhere, but you’re out on international waters and there’s no law.

Guess what? You go work on those ships at your own risk. What was happening at one time was you had a lot of crew members of those kinds of ships sign on to make some money, and then the people who owned the ship decided they didn’t want these people anymore. They don’t just go, “You’re fired.” They take you down to the hole of the ship and shoot you in the head. The chance of anybody getting caught for murder out there is nil because you’re in international waters, which is international law, and it’s almost impossible to investigate that and prosecute it. Chance of prosecution? Dang near zero.

That’s what “The Wake of Magellan” is about: A guy who feels like he’s gonna get killed at any minute because he already knows his friends did. He’s out there thinking, “Do I jump over this thing?” It’s total fear. Then you’ve got stuff like “Complaint in the System (Veronica Guerin)”, for one more example. This is about a lady named Veronica Guerin who was gunned down in that war in Dublin going on between the IRA vs. the Queen of England. They didn’t really like what was going on over there in Britain, but they’re still part of the UK. It was a turmoil of the 70s and early 80s. People who spoke out or tried to have peace, they’d find you at an intersection and…you know. She became kind of a focal point of the out of control situation. Then they wound up putting a prison there.

They made a prison specifically just for IRA people. It’s kind of strange. I watched a special just the other night and it was weird. They were political prisoners! That’s all it was. It wasn’t really people who went out and committed atrocious acts. It was a whole prison, minimal security for the most part, but you still couldn’t leave. A lot of them went on hunger strikes and did so until they were just about dead. It was crazy. That stuff made it into there too and they’re totally unrelated, but it’s just to give you an example of unrelated stories that lead go inspiration.

Speaking of Savatage, it’s been 30 years since you joined the band. What events led up to your audition and did you have any apprehension over filling Jon Oliva’s shoes?

ZS: It was a real exciting time. I was up there in Boston singing with a band called Wicked Witch, which actually contained Jeff Plate, who would become the drummer for Savatage. We were playing in that band up there together, doing demos, trying to get signed. We were coming around at the end of an era and we’re still playing heavy metal, melodic metal. Grunge is quickly coming in there. It was getting a little wild for bands of that sound. I think we were coming in at the very tale end of it, so there was no guarantees there as far as being able to get signed to a label or anything like that. We forged ahead. It was a group of guys that had a never quit mentality.

I always say it takes some luck. It takes some talent, and I’ve been the recipient of both. I’m so thankful for that. This was a prime example, coming into Savatage. We had a demo with Wicked Witch. We were doing all these shows in New England. I got word that Jon was gonna take a break from the road and the band, and do more of the production role for a while. It was no guarantee that he wouldn’t just come back and it would be a temporary role for a singer, but they might’ve been looking for somebody, so I said, “Well, I’ll send a demo.”

The luck part came because I was one of the few people who wasn’t trying to sound like Jon. I heard from Criss at one point and he goes, “Man, your demo is going to the top here.” I was shocked because I don’t sounds anything like Jon, in my opinion. I put it in there just to see what would happen. He goes, “Good for you. We’ve thrown out all the people who are trying to sound like Jon. That’s only leaving a couple people and you’re one of them.” I’m thinking, “Wow! This is intense!”

Criss’s wife, Dawn, who also passed away some number of years ago, maybe 8 to 10 years ago unfortunately, she was a big fan of my demo. I knew that she was in the background. She let me know all the time once I got into the band, “Hey, I was the one who was pushing your tape to my husband. I really felt you were the right one.” I told her that I owed it to her for being Criss’s wife and getting behind my audition so much. That helped. There are reasons behind everything. Just to have another voice in his ear really helped me. Anything you can get.

We put it in and Paul O’Neill said, “Come on down to New York to Queens to my apartment. Let’s do some in person auditions. Maybe one or two sessions and let’s see what happens.” I got down there. We sat on his couch, him with his acoustic guitar just playing anything: Beatles, Bad Company, KISS, whatever came up. “Hey, sing this!” It’s coming at you off the cuff. “I might not know all the lyrics!” “Don’t worry about that. If you want ’em, here. I’ll right ’em down real quick.” He had told me to learn the entire Streets album. That’s a challenge because here I am, a guy who’s not really sounding like Jon, going and learning everything Jon’s doing, which I already had.

Your question brings up a lot of interesting points, but I learned the entire Streets album. So we would play stuff like “Tonight He Grins Again”, “A Little Too Far”, or “Jesus Saves”, just to try and see the different tonality that I had. Coming into Savatage and doing the rehearsals for Edge of Thorns, I was more one-dimensional in my opinion. I had been singing since I was 9, but I didn’t really ever have to adjust to have different tone and different timbre coming into a band. With Wicked Witch, it was one tone. Maybe soft clean and loud clean. I didn’t ever have to get rough or have a lower timbre kick in, so I had to develop 2 gears real quick.

Even the song “Edge of Thorns” shows you, that was the beginning of me discovering new tonality in my voice because the verses are a different tone than the choruses. The choruses kick into a different gear and I didn’t really have that gear until I joined Savatage, so everything helped so much in the development, Joining a great band with amazing music quickly develops your repertoire of your voice. I was able to make the transitions because I had a lot of singing experience, but it was a little nerve wracking at times.

I didn’t really feel like I had to keep up or be Jon. He was the first one to tell me, “Hey, I’m coaching you. I’m behind you. I’m in on the decision to bring you in. Don’t be me. I need you to be Zak.” At that time, I didn’t even have a real last name *laughs*. My real name wasn’t gonna be used in the band because it sounded too much like Jack Russell (of Great White). They were on our label. Paul came to me and said, “Your name is Zach Trussell. That’s too close to Jack Russell. Everybody’s gonna have a laugh.” Well, I’m a big fan of Jack Russell, but I didn’t even think of that.

He goes, “How about this? What’s your middle name?” I said, “Stephen”. “That’s it! Zak Stevens!” I said, “Let’s not use the “ph” because we know the people in Europe will pronounce it Zak Steffens. How about a “v”?” He goes, “You got it!” *laughs* That was one of our first meetings. “You’re Zak Stevens.” “Alright! I’ll use my middle name.” That’s the reason I couldn’t use my last name. I don’t think I would’ve gone with Trussell anyways.

It’s a British family name and pretty much every Trussell in the United States is related because it’s a rare British name. I’m 100% British. If I were to do 23andMe, I’m sure it would come up 99% England and maybe 1% American Indian. Even my mom and dad’s side is completely British in origin, so there’s probably not too much in there. My kids? They’re another story. They’re all over the place and good for them. It’s very interesting, but mine’s not very interesting. It’d be western European and that’s about it.

Anyways, I was already a huge fan of Savatage. I had all the albums and was already a fan, so I didn’t have to worry too much about singing Savatage songs. As a matter of fact, eerily, I had always imagined myself singing for them. I used to practice in my mom’s garage over in West Columbia, South Carolina in the house I grew up in. I’d go in the garage because it had a little reverb. I’d always have a Savatage song in there, back when I didn’t know what I was doing. I usually left those sessions going, “I could hardly talk. Somebody get me a beer, liquor, something quick.”

That’s how you learn. You start by feeling like you’re gonna kill yourself, and then you go, “I’ll take a lesson or two and try to get this under control.” Drums was my first instrument, so I was always singing sitting down. It’s a whole different animal when you stand up. It’s much better, but still, I didn’t have the training necessarily until probably about a year or two before I came into Savatage, but I got that done. That was all before I moved to Boston and the demo situation.

It was weird. I had been in the garage practicing going, “I don’t know why, but I really feel like I can see myself singing these songs.” It was a really weird deal. I would have this fantasy, like I’m singing “Gutter Ballet” or “Hall of the Mountain King” or something like that, and not really doing a great job at doing Jon. I wasn’t meant to do that, thank goodness, but I would just try to sing it like my voice. I was going, “This doesn’t sound too awfully bad, me just singing it like myself.” It was weird premonitions of what was to come.

You gotta have fantasies! In my head, I’m singing it like Zak Stevens. Of course it’s not easy, because it’s super hard. Jon’s got this incredible range and those high screams and stuff like that. That’s how I developed the ability to do that, studying him. When I had those fantasies in my head, I had this noisemaker that had applause on it. I would get done with the song and you know how you have to do when you’re a kid. You have to act like the crowd is so embracing of you, and here goes the applause meter.

You just got done with “Gutter Ballet”, and you’re doing these fantasies in your head like you’re the rockstar singing. Isn’t it weird how stuff comes true? I’ll never forget that because I was being an idiot. I was probably out there with beer or whatever practicing, doing terrible things for your voice, getting a buzz and going, “Thank you very much! You’re all so wonderful!” *laughs* But hey! That goes to show you have to dream. You have to. It was all a big dream, and I was basking in the glory of my fake crowd and fake scenario.

Then, all of a sudden, it’s not fake anymore. Then it’s time to get down to business. Then I find myself in rehearsals for Edge of Thorns going, “I quickly gotta develop this voice because I don’t even have a second gear and I need 3.” That was Paul O’Neill going, “I’m gonna need you to get this extra gear kicking in on these choruses.” Like I said, I was able to make the adjustments, thank goodness, but already being a fan of the band, it was weird. I was seeing myself in it and that helped a lot, but it was a true stroke of luck that I was able to have anything like that fulfilled.

You mentioned earlier how the grunge thing was happening in the early ’90s. And yet when you joined, Edge of Thorns was Savatage’s biggest commercial success to date.

ZS: Yeah, it was the most commercial. My voice was leaning a little bit more towards radio. “Edge of Thorns” was the first radio success for Savatage on that level. We had about 50 rock stations all over the US that played it over 500 spins. That’s a lot out there. Believe me, there was a time in ’93 where we were out on a US tour. We did Europe first with Overkill, and then we came back and did a tour of the States. If you had on rock radio, there wasn’t anywhere you could go where the song wasn’t playing in somebody’s car.

I’d get in a car with friends in Denver, Colorado. Me and Criss Oliva would go, “Hey, let’s go over to this bar and have a few beers and relax after the show.” “Edge of Thorns” is playing on the radio. It was in heavy rotation. It was a magical…when I say magical, those are things you have to embrace, because they never repeated again, where you could go anywhere in the United States that had a rock station and most likely, if you were sitting in a car, it was playing “Edge of Thorns”. It was just one of those songs that hit a nerve. The phones lit up at the stations and it went nuts. A truly magical time.

At that point, I figured, I don’t know if I shot off and went to heaven. I’m living the true rockstar dream, getting lucky enough to come into a band you love, that you’re already a fan of, and now you can’t even get away from your own voice on the radio. Of course, I can look back at stuff like that now and nitpick it and go, “Oh man, I was limited.” Sure, but I learned to get over that. Up until about 5 or 6 years after that, when I was on records 4 or 5 or whatever with Savatage, I’d look back at Edge of Thorns and go, “Ugh!” But now I’ve learned to actually get over it and enjoy it for what it was.

I was 26. To be able to just do that…it had the emotion and it had the fire. That’s enough. Maybe every note wasn’t super duper precise, like I would demand it to be these days. Maybe I’m demanding it to be too precise these days. Who knows? It might be to a fault. But I know that I’ve at least developed a four-dimensional voice rather than a two-dimensional voice since then, so I think it’s all about just staying in it and growing. Don’t rest on your laurels. Try to always be moving ahead.

Even to this very day, I’m doing projects to try to stretch stuff that I’ve always done and learn from it. I’m trying to at least keep it the same, if not improve. The human voice, for men, we can improve our voice up until about 65 years old, so I got some time *laughs*! I oughta try to keep getting better until then! There’s a lot of rocker out there rockin’ until way late in their 70s and beyond. You just gotta take care of the voice. You can get it done. That’s what I’m gonna try to do.

Speaking of Edge of Thorns, that album also turns 30 this year. What memories stand out to you from making that album and what are your favorite songs off of it?

ZS: Well obviously the title track. What was wild about that was we had 2 completely different vocal melodies for that. Paul liked to peek into all these areas. To his credit, there was never a stone unturned. This time, he had 2 completely different melodies for the song, so it was like, at the end, we were getting ready to commit to one to go record. He’s like, “Which one is it?” The melody that we hear today, that got on the record, is the original one. I said, “The original one. We gotta go with that. I just have a gut feeling about it.”

Me and him were both Pisces. His birthday was a little bit before mine, so we had that same vibe. He goes, “OK Mr. Pisces. I trust your gut feeling.” We always trust our gut. It might not make any sense, but whatever we’re feeling down there…it’s indigestion *laughs*! We strongly said, “Go with whatever your spirit is telling you.” So we went with that and it worked. He came to me later and goes, “You were right Stevens, or whatever your last name is. You did it.” He was mainly consulting me on that since it was my part. He asked everybody, but it was gonna come down to the singer.

“Degrees of Sanity” is really cool. There were 2 songs, I think “Degrees of Sanity” and “Conversation Piece”, possibly, that we did a bulk of and then 2 later. I could be wrong. I like “Conversation Piece”. I like “Skraggy’s Tomb”. That was one I had a little bit more to do with, with the vocal melody. We wrote that right in Criss’s living room. I was living with Criss Oliva when I first joined Savatage. I lived with him for 6 months. He went, “I don’t care! We gotta do some work!”

I came into Tampa in August of ’92, so I had to have somewhere to live. Criss would go, “Come on, we need to write! We’re gonna be coming up with songs and I need your feedback. We’re gonna write music every night in the living room. We’re gonna stay up until about 3 or 4 every night and get a new schedule.” That is when I became a vampire *laughs*. I still am one, just due to that schedule right there! But anyway, I think those are some of the songs that stick out. And I love the beautiful piano piece at the end (“Exit Music”). That was always Jon and Criss. They were always getting one of those per album. Beautiful. I love that kind of stuff.

In closing, it was a few years ago that I interviewed Jon and he said, “Yes, we’ve talked about doing a Savatage thing and everybody’s in for it.” Now obviously, he didn’t say exactly when this “thing” would happen. Has there been any development on that front? If so, what can you tell us?

ZS: Yeah…I can safely say there’s been a little more development on it. I’ll tell you this. When we played Wacken in 2015, TSO and Savatage, we were the first band to use both stages in the 26 years of that festival up until that point. The idea was that Savatage was a reunion and we were gonna continue and do a record or maybe a double album or whatever it may be. It might’ve been the last one, but at least do that. That’s still on the table. In my opinion, it’s probably gonna be more material than less.

When Paul O’Neill passed away, that caught us so off guard. Then, the impetus went to everybody who was involved in TSO keeping the ship afloat. Not only did everybody do a fabulous job, all 32 bandmembers, all the crew, all our vendors, all of the management; everybody had to do it. Everybody did it. Not only that, but I believe we have the ability to take it to the next level and do what we need to do. It took a while because the hashtag was, what would Paul do? You have to do that.

He has his hands on everything. He was one of those bosses where every detail is computing. So when the guy who’s got his hands and is touching everything is gone, you have to really be on your toes when it comes to keeping things going. Jon Oliva was a huge. We got 6 guys in Savatage involved, the original 6 that are in TSO, so we had to do our part and carry a little more load to keep everybody inspired. Everybody looks at me in TSO and goes, “Zak’s the one who’s gonna keep you in a good mood.”

I wanna keep everybody positive. I’m laughing, and that’s what I do. We get serious when we have to, but we wanna keep everybody happy, and then you do better work. Happy, fun people, we have a lot of fun. Everyone’s laughing continuously. Paul used to laugh so much. He laughed at us and we laughed at him; let’s be fair. And everybody laughed at me, and they’re still laughing. I don’t know what in the world they’re talking about, but every time I turn around, somebody’s laughing at me. You think you’d get paranoid, but I don’t because I started it *laughs*.

Everybody did an amazing job, each and every person, but that put a little hold on what Savatage is doing. We were developing it, and then boom. Now I think we have a chance to breathe. I’ll give you this: The last 2 months of 2022, while we were rehearsing and doing all that stuff for TSO, we got more work done with Savatage then we did even from 2017 to that point. That’s a positive sign. I don’t know exactly what can happen from here. There’s a few things beyond our control that I’m sure can be worked out, but the good part is the work’s being done in the background and I’m very excited about that.

I wanna let everybody know be positive, because there is reason to be positive. That’s about all I can say at this point. Take it, go forth, and be happy. Everybody smile. I always said, it started with one band: Savatage. Then it sort of went to 2 bands for a while, but there was a quick transition to TSO because it got wildly successful in America. The small ship that was Savatage, the smaller fighter ship, or the destroyer, had to go do other missions.

Meanwhile, the big, large cruise ship, TSO, which is more like a Disney cruise liner went onto huge things. All of the resources had to be shifted to that big cruise ship. However, you know the ship that’s painted on the front of Wake of Magellan? That’s the Savatage ship. Yes, it’s been hit by some cannonballs, and a bad storm came, and it started to rock side to side, but it hasn’t taken on water! That’s where we’re at right now. Look out, because once that ship gets righted and the storm passes, it’s gonna be hunting down the cruise ship.

So how about this: One band. Then it kind of switched into TSO, for good reason. It’s everybody’s main job and we’re hugely thankful. Now, I’d like to see it become the 2 entities. That’s what we’re working on in the background and that’s the ultimate goal. Of course, everybody in the band wants it to go forward. What Jon said is exactly true, and I’ll come back to it to end this out. Everybody’s working together. We’ve gotten everybody together in the meetings, and that’s huge. So yeah, everybody’s on the same page. We’re gonna keep working on the back end and let some of the dust continue to settle with all that happened with Paul. He’s still with us in spirit. We really feel that, and we’re gonna take it from there.

The new Archon Angel album, II, is available now on Frontiers Records. For more information on Archon Angel, visit www.facebook.com/ArchonAngelBand. For more information on Trans-Siberian Orchestra, visit www.trans-siberian.com. And for more information on Savatage, visit www.savatage.com.