Phenomenally successful in the USA, Trans-Siberian Orchestra have sold in excess of 7 million albums worldwide. 'Night Castle' was originally released in the US at the tail end of 2009 and entered the billboard chart at number 5, reaching gold status in a mere 8 weeks. That's a lot of albums sold. They're also a major touring machine in the States, having played to more than 5 million people there with their multi-million dollar huge production. So they're doing alright in the USA, but what's their profile like over here? Considerably lower. All that may be about to change though, as 'Night Castle', their fifth album, gets an official UK release at the end of February to coincide with their first major European tour. They play a single UK show at London's Hammersmith Apollo on 28^th March.

So what is Trans-Siberian Orchestra? The mastermind behind the project is producer, composer and lyricist Paul O'Neil. The creative core of the project is made up of Jon Oliva and Al Pitrelli from prog-metal legends Savatage, along with co-producer Robert Kinkel. A huge cast of supporting musicians and singers make up the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. The music is a fusion of classical, orchestral and symphonic, mixed with progressive rock and hard rock/metal.

'Night Castle', the band state, is their most ambitious and adventurous project to date. It's a rock opera based around themes of good and evil. The story isn't that easy to follow purely from the music, so it's just as well you get an extensive booklet with the album which has the story in detail, all the accompanying lyrics and all the other info you'd need to immerse yourself in 'Night Castle'.

The last time I saw Jeff Scott Soto, he was belting out a killer version of 'Black Tiger' on stage with Y&T. This man has a seriously good rock voice, as fans of Journey will testify. His vocals appear quite prominently on this album, but it isn't necessarily the Jeff Scott Soto rock fans will be so familiar with. On this album he adapts his voice to suit the more operatic, dramatic theme of the album and tracks like 'Another Way You Can Die' and 'Dreams We Conceive', although guitar based and reasonably heavy, have a Broadway/West End feel to them.

The two main vocal pieces on the album are the lengthy 'There Was a Life' and 'Epiphany', both sung by Rob Evan and clocking in a ten minutes each. As with a lot of the vocal tracks on the album, which carry the storyline, they tend to follow a similar formula, with the light operatic style voice accompanied by a piano setting the scene before the drums and power chords kick in and build to a big crescendo. 'Childhood Dreams' and 'The Safest Way Into Tomorrow', with Jay Pierce taking the lead vocal, also follow this formula. This can all get a bit formulaic and predictable after a while, and sounds a bit like Michael Ball singing a Queen song to me.

Of more interest to rock fans would be the instrumental tracks. Here, O'Neil and Oliva take a well known piece of classical music as a starting point and rock it up, embellishing it with their own contributions. Examples are 'The Mountain' (Grieg) and 'Moonlight And Madness' (Beethoven/Chopin). The best of the bunch here is 'Toccata - Carpimus Noctem', building on the famous Bach piece, which gets pretty damn heavy and has some exceptional explosive guitar work. Of course heavying up a classical motif has been done many times before, notably Ritchie Blackmore giving Beethoven's 9^th that treatment on 'Difficult To Cure' way back in '81, but these versions really work and for me and were the most enjoyable part of the album overall.

There's a good selection of bonus tracks added after the 'Night Castle' concept finishes. 'Nutrocker', is a pretty rocking affair based on a part of Tchaikovsky's 'The Nutcracker', and features a guest appearance from Greg Lake (ELP used to do it live) which is a lot of fun. 'Carmina Burana', known to most as the dramatic music from that Old Spice advert or Ozzy's intro tape from a few years back, also gets the rocked up treatment.

You could imagine that in the context Trans-Siberian Orchestra's huge live production, this album would become quite a spectacle. You've got to be a fan of the West End musical/light opera vocal style to really get into this album, but if you're a fan of Meat Loaf, or have enjoyed the 'We Will Rock You' stage production, you would probably enjoy it too.

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