The Great Debate: Savatage=TSO or Savatage=/=TSO?

[fraroc]

...if they really want to make Savatage fans happy, and be taken a little bit more seriously by metalheads...

That is where you are tripped up.  Making Savatage fans happy and being taken seriously by metalheads are not part of the core discussion when planning out TSO's future.  Maintaining and growing the TSO brand is.  Also, I think their idea of making Savatage fans happy would differ from yours.

I just wish that TSO was taken a bit more seriously by metalheads instead of simply being viewed as a Christmas novelty. 

When you get down to the meat of things, Trans Siberian Orchestra is heavy metal in it's purest form. If you watch any documentary about Metal music, I guarantee there will be someone who mentions that classical music was the "heavy metal" of the eighteenth century. People have compared EVH to Mozart, John Petrucci to Paganini and so on and so forth. So in the sense that TSO mostly does heavy metal renditions of classical music, it should be very appealing to metalheads.