Review: Trans-Siberian Orchestra in Austin, Texas on December 18, 2025
When you’ve become a holiday tradition, you have achieved extraordinary success. Thus, is the travelling heavy metal rock show called Trans-SIberian Orchestra. After having seen this sensory extravaganza several times, I never know what to epect. I’m at a distinct advantage over the first-time TSO attendee, but we’re both still on the edge of our seats wondering what comes next.
Having arrived early and armed with a Chick-Fil-A sandwich, chips and Red Bull in hand, I asked the guy sitting next to me if he’d ever seen them before. “Nope,” he answered, “but I’m not really into orchestras.”
This year’s show opened up with darkness and the sound of an orchestral string section warming up – bows briskly sliding up and down across the violin, viola, and cello strings. Then the audible tap-tap of a director’s baton on the music stand and the rock band came alive with power chords and numerous operatic choral voices as the arena lit up with synchronized blasts of lights. The wide-as-the-stage tall video screens brightly displayed Egyptian ruins and pyramids under beautiful blue skies and racing clouds. This gave way to the MTV-era of high-speed video edits.
The band, consisting of veterans Al Pitrelli, Andrew Ross, and Angus Clark on guitars, Blas Elias on drums, John Lee Middleton on bass, Asha Mevlana on electric violin, and Jane Mangini and Mee Eun Kim on keyboards just tore through an extended jam that showed off the spectrum of their various instruments. This was “Night Enchanted,” and this was just setting the frenetic and dynamic mood.
The video montage behind them showed gothic castles and several owls in flight. While not a replica of the Fly by Night album cover, I had visions of Rush dancing in my head. There was a Ferris wheel and familiar yet new stained-glass windows that kept me guessing as to what theme this year’s show might be delivering.
When the place quieted and a soft piano started unrolling “Winter Palace,” I thought surely storytelling time was now. I was wrong, TSO was just stretching its musical muscles and setting the tone for the evening. “The Lost Christmas Eve,” which could have been an audible clue to the evening’s theme, was a third tune that showed off the brilliant pieces that make up this musical masterpiece. This song, in particular, highlights the instrument of choice in Western culture, if I can be so bold, the electric guitar in its singing voice beauty. “Oh, Holy Night” played with guitar harmonies is just sweeter than the most delicious eggnog. These perfectly played notes hung in the air and were almost worth the entire event. They just hit such high highs that’s there’s not much better for these musical ears.
Soon it was known that “The Ghosts of Christmas Eve” would be the story/theme of this year’s show. A young runaway girl stumbles into an old theater and the Christmas magic begins as the band performs several classics, like “O Come All Ye Faithful / O Holy Night,” “Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24),” “Music Box Blues,” and “First Snow.”
We see hundreds of kilowatts of laser lights that danced around the arena and sliced distorted through climbing clouds of stage fog, flames of fire stretching thirty or more feet into the air, artificial snow, dazzling AI video images, and hydraulic risers that bring performers high up into the arena. It’s always breathtaking to behold such sights, and it’s glorious to hear it in the heavy metal language of riffs, time changes, solos, walls of vocals, and pure long-held notes of every kind.
Once the story reaches its redemptive end in “This Christmas Day,” the emotion of hope seems to permeate the room. It’s always cool to feel moved when there’s about ten thousand others experiencing the same thing. The last half of the night was like a “Best of” set of TSO classics.
“Wizards in Winter,” “Requiem (The Fifth),” and “O Fortuna” (“Carmina Burana”) rocked the house in serious manner.
Some of the new additions to this year’s tour and highlights was the wonderful swirling drones that circled the performers high atop hydraulic risers, cascading up and down, and swirling around like drone fireflies that came close to mimicking the double helix chromosome ladder. That was so captivating.
It started with something Pitrelli said many years ago at one of these Austin shows, but I get the distinct impression that the blues tradeoffs between Clark and Pitrelli somehow try to conjure the style and spirit of the late Stevie Ray Vaughan when they respond to each other with licks. Whether it’s intentional and exclusive to Austin or not, it is incredible and full of style.
Also captivating was the beautiful acoustic guitar accompaniment by Al Pitrelli while singer Rosa Laricchiuta softly and poignantly sang out a tender ode to the fallen Ozzy Osbourne – “Changes” – complete with gender-changed lyrics in the middle of the “Sleep” Savatage cover. So classy and moving. I think I felt a tear slid down my cheek.
Overall, it was a good two-and-a-half-hour show and it left no audience member wanting. Fresh, familiar, and excellent. I don’t know how they do it, but they amazed, captivated, and thrilled to the max once again.
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