SYMPHONY X — Symphony X (review)

SYMPHONY X — Symphony X album cover Album · 1994 · Progressive Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
2/5 ·
Phonebook Eater
Symphony X's debut is really nothing too special, like most debuts of Progressive Metal bands. Even from this first effort the band expresses their theatrical and dramatic style in their songs, like many Power and Neo Classical Metal bands, as well as Neo Prog ( Fish-era Marillion, Pendragon). This element will always be part of Symphony X's characteristics, but some of these characteristics are still yet to develop, and will eventually when "The Divine Wings Of Tragedy" will be released.

As I said, this album isn't particularly good, even because of the band's singer at at the time, Rod Tyler, who isn't nearly as good as Russell Allen's powerful voice. In fact, the singer's vocals are flat, tired, and give no expressions whatsoever.

What makes this album good are the songs, some of them, great, some of them not bad. The solos aren't as spectacular as the ones from following albums, but still, some arrangements are enjoyable for me. The melodies are, like I said before, theatrical, and some times they can be effective, some times they just can't. The musicians already show an impressive technical preparation, but still they don't prove it completely.

An immature album, that is definitely the best way to describe this. Not very promising, but we all know that the band later on reached their maturity with the already mentioned "Divine Wins Of Tragedy", possibly the best and finest Neo Classical Metal album of all time. But when this debut was released, back in 1994, the band had still much more to prove.
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