In a world where the pace of change and innovation keeps on getting faster, anyone standing still is dead in the water. Apply that adage to the equally complex dynamics in the world of hard rock and metal, and to survive you need to keep your face in the public eye, preferably with a new album every couple of years. Stretch that any longer, and you run the risk of being tossed aside in favour of countless new acts constantly vying for their fifteen minutes in the spotlight. With that in mind, their aren't many acts who could get away with a five year gap between studio releases, but that's exactly what New Jersey's SYMPHONY X have just done. And what's more, their latest epic tome ‘Paradise Lost' has definitely been worth the wait. DAVE COCKETT spoke recently with band guitarist MICHAEL ROMEO.

Rewinding just a little, Symphony X released the masterful ‘The Odyssey' in the fall of 2002, and spent the best part of the next twelve months promoting it. "We went on tour with Stratovarius," Michael explains, "which at the time was the biggest tour we'd ever done. And it certainly helped to raise our profile, especially in Europe ... but even over here in a market that's never really been interested in the band before, it was actually doing pretty good. We went on tour with Blind Guardian, and later on we did some shows with Queensryche, and then of course, we were invited to do the Gigantour with Megadeth and Dream Theater."

Five years ago, most metal bands in the States struggled to get any sort of recognition from the domestic market. Thankfully, there are now clear signs that's all changing. "You see quite a lot of metal bands doing well here now," offers Michael. "In the 90's you had the grunge thing, and the rap stuff was always popular; and you really didn't see much metal stuff at all. But looking back, that's just the way it was .. I mean, we were happy just to go to Japan and play, or come over to Europe and play, or South America. And I think it really didn't bother us that much that we had no outlet in the States. It was like ‘Well, you know, we live here, and it kind of sucks that this is the way it is', but that's the way that it was. But obviously now, just from us doing some of the things that we've been doing over the last couple of years, it seems to be like more and more doors are opening up."

It's been an awful long time coming, but after bouncing about all over the schedules, a firm release date has been set for the new album. "I know, we never thought it would drag on as long as it has," concedes Michael, "but there were a number of things. Perhaps the biggest reason from our end was the touring thing. There were opportunities that came our way that were just too good to turn down, like the shows with Queensryche, and especially Gigantour. We felt that they presented us with an opportunity to do something that would benefit the band longer term, but the flip side was that we had to put off writing. Either that or try writing on the road, and that just wasn't working for us. Then, because time had dragged on and on, we felt that the album had to be something really special …it needed to deliver something that the fans would feel was worth the wait. So again, that added a little bit of extra pressure. The real writing … we only really dove in 100% after the Gigantour. By then, we had a lot of riffs, and a lot of ideas, but we just couldn't find the time to really put everything together, and really work on it. So after we did Gigantour, we said ‘Look, we really can't do anything else, we need to dedicate 100% of the time to this.' That would've been around September/October of 2005.

Further shows were scheduled for last summer, but these had to be cancelled when bassist Mike LePond became ill with Crohn's disease, a chronic condition causing inflammation of the digestive tract. "Yeah, and that was another thing that happened that kinda stopped things," Michael recalls. "We thought that it wouldn't be a big deal to go and do some festivals. We thought that we'd put the writing off just a little bit, just to do some rehearsing and get ready for the thing, and then it turns out that Mike's illness really started to kick in, so in the end we couldn't do the shows anyway. And then of course, he was sick here, and he was in hospital … and in the end he decided to go ahead with this surgery; which actually was a good thing because since he's done that he looks a lot better, and he's feeling a lot better. All his symptoms are a lot easier to control and keep at bay. I guess that it's not 100% curable, but now I think it's not even an issue anymore."

Entitled ‘Paradise Lost', whilst not a full blown concept, their latest release is based on the similarly titled epic poem by 17th Century poet John Milton. "Absolutely," agrees Michael. "Milton's work was pretty much our inspiration. By the time that the Gigantour was over we had a lot of pieces, a lot of riffs … and one of the things that we wanted to do was to make this album a little more aggressive, more guitar riff driven. And once we'd decided to use Milton's work as a guideline for some of the music and lyrics, it all started to come together because it gave us some direction. It's not a concept album in the normal sense, but it deals with ideas like betrayal, and revenge, and corruption, and lust ... there's a lot of those sorts of ideas in the lyrics. And in the music as well, you know, there's a lot of choirs, and church bells; and it's definitely a little darker. Perhaps not the darkest thing we've ever done, but we were just trying to be creative, and to find something that would give us inspiration."

For a poem written the best part of four centuries ago, ‘Paradise Lost' echoes a surprisingly current warning. "Yeah, it just fit perfectly," agrees Michael, "and there are plenty of parallels that can be drawn to things going down today. Okay, it's about Satan, it's about Hell, and it's about the Garden Of Eden … it is about all these things, but at the core of it, it's about human emotions. And that's what we were looking at more than telling a story, we thought let's just go for the core emotional thing you know, let's just write a song about what that feels like. You're talking about betrayal, and you're talking about God and the Devil, and it's like there's probably no bigger or stronger illustration of betrayal. And I guess there's a lot of political inferences in there too; there's a lot of power, and lust for power … all these things, you know. But we didn't want to directly relate the songs to anything happening today, because we didn't want to make any sort of statement. I guess you can interpret it in many ways, but we just wanted to have something to bounce our lyrics of off, and the music to have some kind of a theme, some kind of an atmosphere to it."

With such a long gap between albums, I wondered if the writing process this time was harder? "Well, it definitely made the writing a little longer," offers Michael, "you know, because that's always in the back of your mind. You have like this little extra pressure that it's been longer, so you really need to work harder. Then you're working harder, and that takes longer, and you're taking longer, so you have to do better, it was like a vicious circle. There was a little bit of that, but we got to a point where we felt like ‘Yeah man, this is what we want to do, it feels right'. So it did take a while … I don't think we started tracking, really tracking the music until … maybe a year after Gigantour finished."

Maybe part of the problem was coming up with something recognisable as Symphony X, without repeating what had gone before. "Yeah, I mean, we always do what we want to do," says Michael, "and I think it always sounds like us. It's just maybe more going in one direction than the other. The ‘V' record is pretty progressive and concept driven … it's a little more artistic in that sense. And then ‘The Odyssey', is a little bit of the … you know, it definitely has a little bit of the heavier riffs. It's a little more metal, but then you have a song like ‘The Odyssey' where it's just full on classic. With this one, we kind of just shifted over to the metal side a little more, but I don't think we lost any of what we are in doing that. The title track ‘Paradise Lost' for example is very typical of us with the piano, and the progressive themes. And the last track has a lot of things that are very kinda typical of us too, but there are other songs that move the other way. Pretty much the whole feel of the album is a little heavier and darker, but it's still us. You know, we didn't try to do anything on purpose, we just found a topic, and just like ‘The Odyssey', musically and lyrically we tried to represent it the best we could."

Being such a guitar driven album, the vast majority of the writing on ‘Paradise Lost' was left to Michael. "In the past, a lot of it was me an' Mike Pinella," he offers, "because there was a lot of the piano/keyboard stuff. This one, just because of the nature of what we wanted to come up with, a lot of it was up to me … pretty much the whole record because it just was more of a guitar oriented set of songs, But there were still songs where me and Pinella would get together, like this ‘Paradise Lost' thing. I'd have an acoustic, and he'd have a piano, and we'd get back into the way that would work for that song. So I mean, every album is a little different in the way that the writing goes, but since this one we all said ‘Yeah, let's go this direction', and everyone's like ‘Go ahead Mike, just go', ha, ha! But there's a lot of trust and respect within the band, so that's not really an issue. You know, it's never like ‘Well, this is what we're gonna do'. If I write something and it sucks, everyone's gonna tell me it sucks … I'm not gonna be offended, it's like ‘Okay, let's try this' or whatever. But yeah, like I said man, there's a lot of trust, and we're all friends, and the nature of this record being more guitar driven, it was like ‘Okay, go, do your thing, do the best that you can'."

As the album has been on the schedules for a year or more, I guess that the record company were less than happy with the delay. "Well, let's just say that they weren't exactly pleased with the way that things were going," laughs Michael. "But then again, to be honest, they knew the importance of this record, and at the end of the day, they were like ‘Hey, we know you guys took a long time, but we think you have something really great here' .. and it's kinda been that attitude."

Looking at it from a fans perspective, I'm sure would sooner wait five years for a great album than have a mediocre or dull one every twelve months. "Exactly," nods Michael, "and we could do that, we could just roll out the same old shit and really not care, and just try to grab a quick buck, but that's not we do, it's not who we are. Our fans have a certain level of expectation from a Symphony X album, and they'll wait because they know they're gonna get something that we really put our hearts into. And Ok, it might take a little longer, and there's always people that say ‘Oh, I wish it wasn't so heavy', or ‘I wish it was heavier' … and you kinda can't please everybody. We've heard that with every record, but then as time goes on, it grows on ‘em, and then people say ‘Oh, this is my favourite album'. You know, when they first heard it, they hated it, but a couple of months later it's like ‘I can't stop listening to this thing!'.

Not surprisingly, most of the specialist press are falling over themselves to heap praise on ‘Paradise Lost'. "Yeah, most of the stuff I've seen is real hot," Michael confirms, " … most of the stuff. There are a couple of people who've said ‘Oh, it's trying to be too heavy …' or whatever, but I guess they're just people who don't understand what we do. We never just try to be anything, you know, we just pick something and run with the ball. We do what we think is right … but 99% of the stuff I've seen is great."

Bottom line though, as long as the band are happy with what they've done, it makes the job of selling it to everybody else that much easier. "We're really, really happy with it," Michael states. "And one of the things that I had in mind when I was writing this record … it was like, okay, as a musician, you wanna do your thing and you want to challenge yourself, and show your chops, and blah, blah, blah. But this one for me, if I was a fan … I mean, I am a fan of metal, of music … but it was like, what would I wanna hear when I put this CD on, you know, from beginning to end? What would make me be like ‘Wow!', you know, what would really get my attention, and keep me attention, and gimme some surprises? And that was kind of what the writing process too was like, you know, ‘Oh, maybe this song is too long, and it's wandering here, let's cut this down'. A lot of attention went into stuff like that where it just felt like it kept hittin' you, it just kept comin' atcha., you know. So, for the band, and for me, we're really happy with it."

As we speak, the band have just returned home from Sweden Rock. "It was good," Michael reflects, "we had a little bit of technical difficulties up there, I mean, the festivals … it's a little tough for us because some of the music is a little complicated, and it's not the best scenario for hearing the other guys on stage, so you've kinda gotta go with it. There's little things like , but overall it was good. And we haven't played for so long … we've been in the studio for what seems like forever, so just getting back out there was great. It's like a bike you know, you've just gotta get your touring legs back on, and get back into the groove of it. But you know, we've done four shows now. We did the show in New York, went down to Puerto Rico, then the Gods Of Metal in Italy, and finally Sweden Rock, so we're getting back into the swing of it."

The rest however is all too brief as the tour kicks off in earnest in South America a couple of days later, taking in the US and Canada over the next couple of months. "And then there's the Dream Theater tour over in Europe in the fall," says Michael. "So yeah, it looks like we're gonna keep busy, and once the album's out, we all hope it's gonna do well and there's gonna be more touring opportunities for the band."

A European headliner of their own perhaps? "Yeah, absolutely," states Michael. "Like I said, we have these tours in South America, and then America, and then the Dream Theater thing, and I'm sure that after that, more stuff will start to fall into place. You know, we're definitely gonna come back to Europe and do a headlining tour. I know our management, they have a pretty big plan, and they're just kinda putting the pieces together now. But over the next couple of months, things will get a little more concrete … definitely.."