Trans-Siberian Orchestra Cranks Up Holiday Schmaltz

No body of music has been abused and debased more frequently than the Christmas canon. Holiday music has a built-in emotional charge and an easy familiarity, and that’s a dangerous thing: There’s plenty of room for interpretation without fear of alienation.

That’s the organizing principle behind the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, the most audaciously overblown experiment in musical tackiness since Lawrence Welk picked up his baton.

Christmas is a cottage industry for the TSO. The group has released two CDs of holiday cheer that have become bestsellers, and its concerts are now one of the five top-grossing holiday-themed shows in the country. The TSO brought its high-flown Christmas Muzak on Friday to the Universal Amphitheatre, turning sublime music into turgid schmaltz.

TSO mastermind and producer Paul O’Neill, whose credits include overseeing the career of ‘80s heavy metal band Savatage, has banked on one gimmick: Plugging holiday classics into a Marshall stack, thereby giving gentle standards a jolt of metal swagger.

The TSO, which consisted of a small string section, two keyboardists, and a pair of guitarists (including Megadeth’s Al Petrelli) who liked to underline each power chord with an affirming head nod, leeched the dynamic variation out of everything it surveyed and replaced it with tactless bluster.

Thus, “Joy to the World” came off sounding like prog-rock lite, and large sections of “The Nutcracker” answered what had previously seemed imponderable: What if John Tesh fronted Metallica?

This show was best suited for those whose idea of fun is a Super Bowl halftime show.