Doctor Butcher

Weird that there is no post on this awesome jon oliva side project.

ordered me the cd today.

thoughts on this band?

Fat Freddy turned me onto this; I had never heard of it in the past. Positively fierce music, in some ways more enjoyable than Stevens-era Savatage. I Spotify it from time to time; need to grab the CD.

I'm going to be in the minority on this one, considering how revered Savatage and all related projects are to most folks here, but I didn't think it was anything special. I had this one...



Sorta kinda like Savatage but not as uptight or serious, with lyrics bordering on cheesy or comical at times. A less serious side-project I guess. That's what I thought of it anyway. Perhaps the studio versions were better than this demo collection.

If you're a fan of 'tage, you should have no problem finding something to like with Dr. Butcher. It wasn't something I played very often and sold my copy on ebay.

Doctor Butcher is excellent.  Very good US Power Metal with tons of snarling nastiness from Jon Oliva.  I have the original release, the demo collection and the re-release on Black Lotus records that has some of the demos on it.  I think this album rivals the best of Savatage and is certainly better than anything post Gutter Ballet.

Amazing album they did, and for a moment when I saw this thread title, just before clicking on it, I was hoping there's news of a new Butcher album.

Sadly that wasn't case. But definitely a worth while project to discuss. I own the re-print CD version with the bonus disc. The Altar is a great song, and so is the Picture's Wild. A really powerful record. Later on Caffery has kind of sort of managed to partially recreate the same vibe with his solo albums. Especially Faces and Pins & Needles.

This always seemed like Oliva's Carnivore, if that makes any sense.

Carnivore was Pete Steel going over the top of over the top, both lyrically and musically - pushing the metal cliches of sex and violence past the point of bad taste and back again.

Doctor Butcher seemed like Oliva taking the cliche of metal as music for pissed off young men to extremes, but that's just my read on it. Very reminiscent of the older Savatage material, but very intentionally funny, I think.

At least Doctor Butcher is actually FUN and not nearly as pretentious as any of the "Paul O'Neill Project" albums masquerading as Savatage.

I thought as a fellow prog fan that "pretentious" wouldn't be a dirty word.

Love the Doctor Butcher album... spent way too much $$ on it for an import copy when it was first released n '93, '94, whenever it was.

I have the "Demos" CD too but it's mostly a "Diehards only" purchase. I listen to the studio album way more often.

A producer (Paul O'Neill) trying to turn a straight-ahead metal band that wrote goofy sexual innuendo tracks like "Skull Session" and "The Whip" into some kind of Broadway influenced "Rock Opera" is pretentious. They should have changed the name of the group to "The Paul O'Neil Project".

You're not completely wrong, but I do get the sense that Jon would have gone that way eventually on his own. While his solo stuff has regained a harder edge, he's also kept a lot of the prog touches that were laid at O'Neill's doorstep. He may have shied away from full-blown concepts, leaving that for TSO, but the loftier songwriting subjects and the like haven't gone anywhere.

S.D. wrote:

At least Doctor Butcher is actually FUN and not nearly as pretentious as any of the "Paul O'Neill Project" albums masquerading as Savatage.  

Chris Caffery says he is working on a new Doctor Butcher album

that's awesome news!

Love that Doctor Butcher album. I have the Black Lotus release.