After a sad period of the record industry trying to convince music lover that technical music, especially guitar soloing, was no longer the “in” thing, traditional heavy metal is making a comeback. Bands like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Testament and other legendary powerhouse metal bands are once again a rising force in the music industry. Also, video games that extol the virtues of complex musicianship such as Rock Band and the Guitar Hero series have a whole new generation worshipping at the altar of the gods of metal. Considering the return to traditional metal instrumentation values, it is prime time for a band of technical brilliance like Symphony X to elevate to “rock star” status.
Symphony X is not quite a house hold name, but their latest album Paradise Lost has achieved far greater success than prior efforts. It is the progressive ensemble’s first break into the top two hundred in the Billboard charts. With their video “Set the World on Fire,” this album also marks the band’s first appearance on the Head Bangers Ball. Symphony X can justify these career milestones, as readers will see in the following interview, by referring to the quality of their latest album. Their newfound success is also a testament to their perseverance.
Since their self-titled debut album in 1994, the group has gradually climbed to the upper strata of the progressive rock scene. The group has extensively toured throughout Europe, which offers a much bigger audience than America. However, touring with Megadeth, Dream Theater and other metal icons as part of the Gigantour in 2005 brought their music to the largest audiences the band had seen in the U.S. Currently, Symphony X is making their way across the U.S. as the headlining act with Epica and Into Eternity. Before the group took the stage in San Antonio, Texas, Blistering.com caught up with the extraordinarily talented vocalist, Russell Allen for an in-depth discussion concerning the recent developments with the band.
Blistering.com: How is the tour going?
Russell Allen: It’s going good.
Blistering.com: You offered your fans a poll to choose your set list. Did you get a good response from the fans?
RA: Yeah, the response was really strong. They chose a lot of songs that surprised us. They chose mostly new material, which we are already playing anyway. It didn’t really help us pick old songs. We figured we would get really old songs that we haven’t played in ten years. That wasn’t the case. There were old ones in there, but they weren’t what we thought, either. It is cool to get some insight on what one slice of the fan base wants to hear because not everybody gets on there and votes. There are thousands of Symphony X fans around the world, but only two hundred got on there and voted, so you have to weigh it out and decide if that is what people really want to hear.
It was kind of like a survey: “If you could survey a hundred Symphony X fans, what would be their top response?” It’s that kind of thing. We thought it would be cool to see what they said. We included “Masquerade” off the Symphony X album. We also included “Looking Glass,” which we haven’t played in a long time. The most requested stuff is the new stuff: “Set the World on Fire,” “Paradise Lost” and these other tunes off the album that we planned on playing. It was an interesting experiment. I think we can do it again, sometime.
Blistering.com: What do you think everybody wanting to hear the new stuff says about your new album and your career in general?
RA: Yeah, that’s pretty much a statement in itself. This album is the most successful, so far, to date. We’re really psyched about that, and having such a long wait between albums—five years—and having an album that is attracting a lot of people to the band is a testament to the quality of the album.
Blistering.com: Paradise Lost landed in the top two hundred in the Billboard charts. This was the first time in your career you had an album break through into the charts. Why do you think this album sold so much better than your earlier releases, especially considering how downloads affect the industry.
RA: I don’t know. It had a lot to do with a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff going on. Inside Out received some help from SPV, their parent company, on this release. They got us some videos produced and helped finance a lot of our marketing. For the first time, we have a lot of tools to work with in the market place. I think that helps get the word out; it helps introduce a lot of people to the music and get us into that two hundred. Some of the avenues we pursued turned out to be very good. We didn’t think we would chart in the United States. We are a metal band, you know. Lately, it has kind of been a phenomenon. Slayer had a top ten record. They did the whole thing through Hot Topic. That was a big deal! Hot Topic is a new avenue for selling new music. Stuff like that helps out, so does new ideas like this. We are looking at some new ideas because the record industry is changing every day, as we speak…the downloads, the records.
We tried to put a lot of emphasis on our packaging. When you get the album, it folds open all these different ways. Actually, we had been approached about submitting it to the Grammy people for a Technical Grammy because no one had ever done that particular design. I thought that was kind of cool. We just wanted to offer our fans something unique. When you buy something, you are gonna get your money’s worth. Packaging is a big deal now. We want to continue to offer good packaging, posters or whatever we can offer in the actual purchased product. Most music fans still want a piece of the packaging. It is just too easy to get the downloads. I would say that purchased downloads probably account for about twenty to twenty-five percent of our business, sales-wise. That is not bad, but people are still going to CD shops and picking up the album. We try to focus on offering the best album—musically, sonically and package wise—that we can afford.
Blistering.com: Keeping with the idea of the factors that led to your new-found success, do you feel Dave Mustaine bringing you on to Gigantour contributed to your success?
RA: Oh yeah, but it’s not as big as when we were on it. I’m not saying that because we were on it, we were lucky because the first one brought in a lot of fans. We played in a lot of arenas and wood sheds all across America. This only has a few bands, mostly thrash bands, and it is in theaters and descent sized venues, but not arenas or outdoor ampitheaters like we had with Dream Theater. Dream Theater brings a big draw. It was Mike Portnoy who got us on that tour. He had mentioned it to Dave. Dave didn’t know who we were. Both the drum and guitar player, the Drover (Shawn and the recently-departed Glenn) brothers, were fans of our music. We had known them for years in Canada. We didn’t even play on the main stage. Dave was very apologetic about that later on. It was no one’s fault; it was just that he didn’t know us. He said, “I had no idea you would get this kind of reaction from so many people.” It really helped out a lot. It got the ball rolling here in America.
