Groupe:

Symphony X

Date:

23 Février 2016

Interviewer:

Blaster & Evanessa

Interview Michael Romeo (face to face)

Hi Michael, nice to see you in Paris. How is this European tour going so far?

I’m fine thanks. The tour is going well so far. There’s been a lot of travelling in the first couple of days, a lot of driving back and forth in the UK to go to the airport and pick up our gear and other stuff, but we’re good now, we’re in our groove so it’s good…. and the shows have all been great, so we’re happy.

Let’s start with questions about “Underworld” that was released last summer. Would you agree that this record mixes the best of the different worlds developed by your band over the years? The melodic and progressive aspects from the 90s and the more brutal dark identity you’ve developed in the last ten years or so?

Yeah, we had a plan.With each new album, we talk about what we want to do, musically, lyrically, thematically… With “Iconoclast”, we wanted to explore the theme of man and machine, it was meant to be dark, heavier, technological, more aggressive… But with “Underworld”, we talked about mixing a lot of the things that we had done. We wanted to bring back some more melodic, ballady things, progressive ideas and still have aggressive and heavy riffs. We talked about the ideas, the concept, Dante’s inferno, Orpheus, the underworld going to hell and back for a woman… and it could work with what we wanted to do musically because on some songs, you could have lighter things and it would still make sense because of the emotions… and on other songs, we could have really heavy stuff because of the hellish theme. So, everything worked very well.

There’s even something that’s quite new for Symphony X, some sort of rock vibe on “Run With The Devil” for instance…

Yeah, there’s a couple of things that are a little different on that record like that one and on the song “Legend” too actually. It has a little bit of prog rock thing going on… Even “Without You” which is kind of a typical ballad for us is not exactly like our previous ballads. It’s a little more accessible, I think. It’s not like we tried to do something drastically different but we wanted to try little things here and there, to keep it exciting, you know.

Going back to “Iconoclast”, some fans complained that it was too heavy, not prog or symphonic enough, do you think that with this record, you might have been a step too far towards the dark side of the force?

No man… I mean… prog is moving forward and being progressive with your ideas and not doing the same things. If we kept on doing the same shit, that would not be progressive. Yeah, it’s heavy, aggressive, abrasive… but that’s the concept of the record. That’s the intent. You can’t make everybody happy but it’s not a completely different record than the previous ones. It’s not the same of course, it’s definitely darker but it’s still us, we haven’t completely changed direction. You can’t make everybody happy anyway but it’s important that we make ourselves happy.

People tend to separate your career in two halves. One that would include your five first albums, more melodic, symphonic or progressive and the other one that would be much more metal, heavy, aggressive. Do you agree with that way of describing the evolution of the band?

Yeah, I mean… I think that early on, there was a little more of classical elements… maybe not more classical but more of a different genre of classical, actually. With time, we have borrowed from different classical composers. For example, in the early albums, when we wanted to do a classical thing, we would borrow things from Bach or Beethoven… whereas now, I’m more into Stravinsky. So it’s true that on the first records, you had more harpsichord stuff, more neo-classical things going on because I was into that kind of stuff back then… but it evolved, as I got older I started to appreciate composers like Stravinsky or Bartok that I didn’t like so much when I was younger.

Talking about evolution, have you got any idea of what the next steps for Symphony X might be? Have you got ideas you’d like to try/experiment?

Not now… Usually, we work on a record, we go on tour and when the tour comes to an end, we start talking about the next record and working on it…

You’re not the type of guy who constantly writes music or riffs on the road and then explores them later, I guess…

Yeah, yeah, I do, I write stuff… but I noticed that it never gets used in the end. I like writing and I try to keep busy even for other things that are not related to Symphony X… But working on the road? No, no way dude. There’s just too much shit going on and you can’t focus. That’s not for me.

Do you sometimes feel frustrated because you have ideas, things you’d like to try but then say “no, can’t use that, it’s not for Symphony X”? Or do you feel totally free to do what you want to do?

I think we can pretty much do anything we want… Are we gonna do a rap record? No, we’re not going to do that, ha ha. But I think we can do the stuff that we like. I love classical music, big epic stuff, film music, John Williams, Star Wars, I love all that shit. And with Symphony X, we sometimes get to explore that kind of things like we did on “The Odyssey”, for example… On “Iconoclast”, we tried to use more mechanical textures, electronic things… and I think it worked. We get to experiment a little when we feel like it.

“Damnation”, “Divine Wings”, “Olympus”, “The New Mythology”, “The Odyssey”, “Paradise”… Let’s talk about the importance of mythology in Symphony X and other themes you’d like to explore.

Yeah, I think that the music we play calls for that kind of themes. We put a lot of time into the music we create and we want it to be kind of grand… and these universal ideas of themes like “good and evil”, “light and darkness” even “tragic love” sometimes, you know, powerful things, fit the music that we like to play better than if we wrote about someone who would walk their poodle at the friggin’ pond or lake, ha ha… It might be a very beautiful song but not for us, you know what I mean…

Well, it depends on what’s going to happen to that poodle.

Ha ha ha… Yeah, exactly. You know what I’m saying… with the music we do, that kind of stuff works well. And I think it even helps the music because when we go for a theme, let’s say “Paradise Lost” for example, we think about it and it gives us ideas of different things we could try musically like “oh, let’s do something a bit softer or melancholic on that one”, “we could try something a bit darker here”…

I’ve read somewhere that “Underworld” was one of your best selling records. That’s great. Would you go as far as to say that you’re not that affected by the drop of sales in music that everybody’s talking about?

Oh we’re totally affected. It’s true “Underworld” has done well but the whole market has changed so much… it’s totally different now and it’s tough. It really is tough. The money is not just what it used to be. Now everybody listens to music online, they download stuff, they have Spotify or else… and the bands get paid very little. Even touring is tough now. A lot of bands, small, big, it doesn’t matter… everybody’s touring and it’s become saturated too and it’s more and more difficult to survive. We’re doing ok but we all do different kinds of things on the side to get by… It’s no big deal but the industry is way different than what it used to be and it continues to change, so it’s hard to know what’s going to happen.

On your previous tour, you really played a lot of new material and a handful of classics. This time, it seems you’re taking it a step further, playing “Underworld” in its entirety, leaving just three or four spots in which you include older songs. Don’t you think it’s a bit risky, especially nowadays when everybody, thanks to the internet, can know what you’re going to play?

Well, as you said, we’ve never played a whole album until now. We’ve always played lots of songs from our new releases… but it’s the first time we play the whole thing. We have this new album and we’ve got to play some new shit, you know? It’s impossible to make everybody happy. If people don’t want to come to the show because we play many new songs, I mean… that’s ridiculous. We put so much in every record. So much time, so much energy, so much passion… I would understand that people didn’t wanna show up to our concert if we had a new record with one or two songs that we really worked on and the rest was filler, bullshit, crap… Then I could imagine people saying “oh no, they’re playing all that shit!”. But man, the record has been selling well and so many people like different songs. Some prefer these four songs, some people prefer these other four songs, some like the whole record… And we feel pretty strongly about it. And the shows have been great. I didn’t see anybody complaining… So yeah, you can’t make everybody happy. The thing is that at least, people get something new. And on top of that, we don’t just play the new record, we’ve also tried to change a few things and give people something a bit different from the past as well. For example, we thought “what if we played Out of the Ashes instead of Of Sins and Shadows from the Divine album?”… We thought the fans would appreciate something like that. We also picked something from “V”, we play “Death of Balance”, you know… It’s really hard to make a setlist, just between the five of us, it’s hard already… of course, we’re conscious of the fans but everybody in the band was strong about this band and it felt like it would be good to do that.

Ok, now you’re one of the few bands with success that has never released any DVD. You’ve got nine albums now, you’ve toured for almost twenty years… Why is that?

Yes, it’s one of those things we continue to talk about. The thing is that we don’t want to do something that’s gonna be cheap. It’s getting harder and harder to do because it’s getting harder and harder to get money to do something… You know, we could just do a DVD and shoot it in my backyard and shit… but no, man, it’s gotta be something that’s really enjoyable for the fans. But it all boils down to money, really. And we’ve always been a band saying “if we’re gonna do something, it’s gotta be worth the fans’ time and money”. We’ll figure it out eventually. It’s not going to be exactly what we have in mind, but I’m sure we can do something cool. We’re talking about it.

Michael, how come we don’t see or hear much more of you? For example, Russell tours with Trans-Siberian Orchestra, plays and tours with Adrenaline Mob, sings on albums such as Joel Hoekstra’s or Allen-Lande’s… What about you? Do you have any projects on the side that you’d like to see come to life? How do you spend your time when you’re not working for Symphony X?

Yeah, it’s a different thing I do. I evolve in a different world… I put a lot of time in the band, Symphony X, that’s true. I’ve also started thinking about a new solo record, I’ll probably do one next year, I think. But I’ve been doing other things, just composing, getting into films and TV and that kind of stuff. I don’t really want to have another band. One band is enough for me, thanks (he smiles). It’s a lot of work as it is. So what I do is cool because I get to write some music for TV films and stuff like that but it doesn’t require a lot of my time and I write everything at home, in my studio, it’s a good situation.

I know this has not much to do with music and Symphony X but I have to ask you: as a huge Star Wars fan, what are your thoughts on Episode VII?

I thought it was fucking awesome. My only thing is that with the Kylo Ren guy, the mask didn’t have to come off… then he just looked like a dude and was not evil enough. But it was still solid. I thought the story was great, the visuals were great, the pacing of the movie was really good… it was really entertaining. We took the family and they all really loved it. I think J.J. Abrams did a really good job. The expectations were so high… imagine the pressure that guy must have felt with all these StarWars fans saying “you can’t fuck this up!”… the pressure must have been unbelievable. But I think he really did a great job. And it was great to see old characters coming back, Harrison Ford and others, it was a really smart move and very well done.