Savatage

Getting their start in 1978, Florida's Savatage were one of the earliest stateside acts to adapt the NWOBHM sound. Seminal Thrash label Combat quickly snapped them up before Savatage moved to Atlantic, gradually fleshing out their sound with slicker production and more ambitious song structures. As the century grew to a close, they soldiered on with the 1998 release of Wake of Magellan -- a stylistically and thematically elaborate wild card in the post-Queensryche realm of Progressive Metal.