In a recent interview with Rocksomething.com, JON OLIVA'S PAIN / SAVATAGE founder/frontman Jon Oliva revealed that a lot of the songs on the forthcoming JOP album, Maniacal Renderings, were co-written with Oliva's brother Criss, who was killed in 1993 in a car accident. The following is an excerpt from the story:

“Writing’s not as enjoyable and it’s a lot harder without Criss,” Oliva admits. “After the accident, Savatage started to get away from the formula that we had going. We struggled to find the right balance and on “Hand Full of Rain” we beat our formula into the ground. I was feeling like we were getting into a rut and I decided to get away from that. The big difference [on “Maniacal Renderings”] is that Criss Oliva co-wrote some of the songs.”

The obvious question, of course, is how did that come to be?

“My wife found a shoe box packed away and there were a bunch of tapes that had riffs that me and Criss had been working on,” explains the frontman, “I owe my wife a big ‘thankyou’. She came over to me one day with this shoe box and said ,‘Jon is this important?’. I thought it was just a box of shoes, but no, it was all this lost stuff, a lot of cassettes, some as early as 1979 and some that had been recorded just before he passed away. Listening to the tapes was like working with him again, which blows me away. To hear him talking again on tape, I tell you, I’m still walking ten feet in the air!”

Fans excited by this extraordinary find will also be pleased to note that there’s a lot more where that came from too.

“There are about 35 cassettes and I’ve only got through three or four so far. I’m gonna use as much as I can in the future,” Oliva claims. “There’s lots of jamming and then I’ll hear something great and realise we never made that into a song. So Criss co-wrote some of the songs on the new album which alone makes it worth checking out.”

To read the entire interview go to this location.

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