Progressive Metal
United States
Symphony X is an important progressive metal band that has been born on the fertile American progressive metal scene. The band came into existence when guitarist and composer Michael Romeo recorded a demo tape entitled "The Dark Chapter" with the keyboardist, and future band mate, Michael Pinnella in early 1994. Romeo distributed the tape to various recording labels and, due to the tape's reception in Japan, he got himself a record deal in the Land of the rising Sun with the now defunct Zero Corporations Label.
For Symphony X's first album, the 1995 self titled, Michael recruited bassist Thomas Miller, drummer Jason Rullo, keyboardist Michael Pinnella and vocalist Rod Tyler. Despite not being a bad album, Symphony X is widely considered to be the band's worst album for two reasons: 1 - the album has a relatively bad production; 2 - it does not has Russell Allen. That is because Russell not only has better singing abilities than Rod Tyler, but also because Russell Allen is one of Symphony X's main composers (alongside with Michael Romeo), so the lack of his presence is really something to be noted. In addition, the self-titled debut is the only album that features Rod Tyler as the band's singer.
Only six months after the release of the debut, the band releases their second album, called Damnation Game. Tyler had to leave the band, so Russell Allen was recruited as a replacement. He has stayed as the band's singer ever since.
Damnation Game represents the start of the current band's style for the same reasons why the majority of the fans do not like Symphony X: with Allen in the band and the start of his collaboration with Romeo, there were set the foundations for the band's "traditional style". On the other hand, Damnation Game is still something of a raw album, specially when compared with subsequent releases.
In 1997, the band released their third output, entitled The Divine Wings of Tragedy. This album can be considered their breakthrough album, as it was with Divine Wings that they managed to reach a wider audience than before. The feedback from the specialized media also helped the band greatly to get a foothold in Europe as well as keep growing in Japan, their biggest market so far.
The Divine Wings of Tragedy also can easily be considered the band's first full progressive metal release. Not that their other albums so far didn't had any progressive hints, but this was the first one to fully embrace such tendencies. John Milton's works "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained", as well as Dante's inferno references inspired the album's title track. This album was also the band's first to have any part recorded in Michael Romeo's private studio, called "The Dungeon". Every album had various parts recorded on that studio until The Odyssey (2002), which marked the start of albums fully recorded on "The Dungeon".
Still in 1997 the band's drummer Jason Rullo had to leave to solve personal problems and was temporarily replaced by Thomas Wailing. With Wailing the band recorded their next album, Twilight in Olympus, which was released in the next year.
Besides the release of Twilight in Olympus, 1998 saw the band's first overseas gig ever, as well as Symphony X's first world tour, with dates in Japan and Europe. That same year the band had another line-up change: Thomas Miller (Symphony X first bassist) left the band and was replaced byMichael Lepond, which is still the band's current bassist. The joining of Lepond, however, caused some minor problems, since 3 out of 5 bandmembers were named Michael, so, in order to solve this problem, Michael Romeo is answers simply by Romeo, Michael Pinnella is called "P" and Michael Lepond, much like Romeo, is called by his last name. By the end of 1998 a compilation album, entitled Prelude to the Millennium was released in order to summarize the band's first 5 years of existence.
Jason Rullo returned to the band in 1999, resuming his drumming duties and right on time to record the band's fifth album: V: The New Mythology Suite. The album was the first to be released on the band's current label (InsideOut) and is somewhat of a departure from it's traditional style due to the fat that it is a concept album, it has much greater amounts of sound experimentation and the music is much more refined and worked.
V is widely considered as the band's pinnacle and many of its songs are regarded as classics by the fans, such as Egypt and Rediscovery, just to name few. The album's concept revolves mainly through the Greek myth of Atlantis, but also includes other mythological elements from ancient Egypt as well.
One interesting thing about this album is its resemblance with the fifth Spock's Beard album. Both are called "V" and both have similar (but far from identical) covers. Besides, both albums are the band's fifth album, both bands were signed with InsideOut at the time of their recording and release and both album are almost equally long, differing in length only by 11 seconds. Spock's Beard and Symphony X have stated that those similarities are just complete coincidences.
Following the release of V: the New Mythology Suite, Symphony X went on an European Tour throughout 2000 and 2001, were their first (and so far only) live album was recorded. The album is entitled Live at the Edge of Forever.
After the tour, the band entered the studio to record their next album. This album, the Odyssey, features the 24 minute epic based on Homer's epic poem The Odyssey. This album was also the first album the band recorded entirely on Michael Romeo's home studio "The Dungeon".
After the release of The Odyssey in 2002 and subsequent tour, the band entered on a temporary "studio hiatus" in order to allow its members to record their respective solo outputs, much like Yes in the mid 70's. Symphony X, however, continued to tour and play live gigs. The band's participation on the 2005 Gigatour proved that without a doubt. They also had two songs featured on the Gigatour CD and DVD set: Inferno and Of Sins and Shadows.
Pinnella was the first to release any solo material, which was the album entitled Enter by the Twelfth Gate, in late 2004. The album was, as most would expect, keyboard-driven progressive rock with some heavier edge. Russell Allen followed him on the next year and released Atomic Soul in mid 2005. This album had little or no resemblance with the singer's work in Symphony X, being, as stated by him, a hard rock album. Russell also had two other outputs during this period. He teamed with ex-Masterplan vocalist Jorn Lande and formed the side-project Allen/Lande and that project was responsible for The Battle, released in 2005, and The Revenge, released two years later.
2007 marked the return of Symphony X's studio releases. The album Paradise Lost, released in mid 2007, is marked by having a darker tone than most (if not all) of the band's previous albums, what turned out to be a good approach, since Paradise Lost is, currently, Symphony X's best placed album on the charts, both in the USA and abroad, during the first week of its release. As the name suggests, Paradise Lost is inspired by John Milton's poem Paradise Lost and is, so far, the second band release inspired in some way by such work.
After the release of Paradise Lost, Symphony X spent much of 2007, 2008 and 2009 touring around the world in support of their album (the tour was not continuous, but the whole road-time of it through the three years was around 14 months).
Still during their tour they started to work on their new album. During a number of interviews, both on 2009 and 2010, they confirmed that such album was on its way and that, if everything goes well, it would be released on 2010.
(Thanks to CCVP for the bio)
ALBUMS:
2011 - ICONOCLAST
Tracklist:
CD1
01. Iconoclast (10:51)
02. The End Of Innocence (05:27)
03. Dehumanized (06:48)04. Bastards Of The Machine (04:56)
05. Heretic (06:25)
06. Children Of A Faceless God (06:21)
07. When All Is Lost (09:10)
CD2
01. Electric Messiah (06:14)
02. Prometheus (I Am Alive) (06:47)
03. Light Up The Night (05:04)
04. The Lord Of Chaos (06:10)
05. Reign In Madness (08:38)
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