Sauna
Member
- Mar 30, 2010
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Your stance is of course perfectly valid but why take it to such obnoxious extremities
SX new album update
- Thread starter Phanto
- Start date
Your stance is of course perfectly valid but why take it to such obnoxious extremities
Durakonis
Zudviz
- Nov 17, 2013
- 128
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You don't like Candlelight Fantasia, and you are trying to bash all of us. I'm not that arrogant to say that "you're not a real Symphony X fan" or sth, yet your attitude may result in such a burst towards your arrogance some time. 
We sometimes have very different opinions or tastes in music with Kenneth also, but we state our sharp opinions in a normal conversation, not like beginning a long post with "you fans are terrible" or sth.
We sometimes have very different opinions or tastes in music with Kenneth also, but we state our sharp opinions in a normal conversation, not like beginning a long post with "you fans are terrible" or sth. and answer:
That`s the perfect illustration of I`m talking about. When I say some comments here are just pure hatred against new sound of SX and that "Candelight Fantasia is not really that good" I`m arrogant, while other say things like those in the quote and most of you don`t care.
Now I remember why I quit talking on forums like 2 years ago. I think I should do it again...
Durakonis
Zudviz
- Nov 17, 2013
- 128
- 0
- 16
First of all you generalized all of us. And if you have a strong argument to convey, you could've conveyed it without offending people. I did that, i think. I defended Iconoclast, without telling the very majority in here with addressing them "you are terrible" or sth. I've been a Symphony X listener for almost 15 years, and forumer for more than 9 years (even if my new account may be deceiving on that matter). An you know what? I like Iconoclast. And if "we" are "complaining and complaining", then you said that "our" attitude is terrible. Which i think is an equalizer on this matter. I said your attitude was arrogant, not your musical taste or how you express it, specifically about Candlelight Fantasia. I don't see any reasons for you to quit. There had been much more tension here in the past, and things just sorted out in time.
I've been a Symphony X listener for almost 15 years, and forumer for more than 9 years (even if my new account may be deceiving on that matter). An you know what? I like Iconoclast. And if "we" are "complaining and complaining", then you said that "our" attitude is terrible. Which i think is an equalizer on this matter. I said your attitude was arrogant, not your musical taste or how you express it, specifically about Candlelight Fantasia. I don't see any reasons for you to quit. There had been much more tension here in the past, and things just sorted out in time. 
uhhhhmmmm4
Jesus Machine
Traps, my last posts have been pretty pointless and unnessesary and you seem to want to understand the dislike of IC, so ill help you with MY view on it.
For the record, I haven't listened to it in a long time so I might be a little off
First, the Lyrics. As others have said, SX have never had spectacular lyrics. The lyrics on IC are especially immature and childish. (Reread the earlier posts on "Rank you 5 favorite SX albums."
The songwriting. I can hardly hear Lepond at all. Go back and listen to their earlier stuff- particularly DG through TIO, and you will know what I mean. As for Pinnella, tjere is not enough of him. He is an amazing keyboard player and has entirely too small a role here. Its really not fair to him. And As for Michael Romeo, he didnt live up to expectations with the guitarworks. He is a thousand times the guitar player I am(and thats being generous to ME), yet some of his riff, such as Heretic or Children of a Faceless God, are written at an ability level that I could have come up with, unlike The Damnation Game for example. I just expected all musicians to be utilized to their best abilities and was greatly let down. And its all loud.. all the time. Its so boring to me.
So there you have it. I dont thinks its a *terrible* album, but i cant help but feel that they didnt put their best into AT ALL. Go ahead and love it, you have every right to. Music is subjective. But I personally think its their worst.
For the record, i DO like PL.
BTW, apologies for any typos, i wrote this from my phone.
For the record, I haven't listened to it in a long time so I might be a little off
First, the Lyrics. As others have said, SX have never had spectacular lyrics. The lyrics on IC are especially immature and childish. (Reread the earlier posts on "Rank you 5 favorite SX albums."
The songwriting. I can hardly hear Lepond at all. Go back and listen to their earlier stuff- particularly DG through TIO, and you will know what I mean. As for Pinnella, tjere is not enough of him. He is an amazing keyboard player and has entirely too small a role here. Its really not fair to him. And As for Michael Romeo, he didnt live up to expectations with the guitarworks. He is a thousand times the guitar player I am(and thats being generous to ME), yet some of his riff, such as Heretic or Children of a Faceless God, are written at an ability level that I could have come up with, unlike The Damnation Game for example. I just expected all musicians to be utilized to their best abilities and was greatly let down. And its all loud.. all the time. Its so boring to me.
So there you have it. I dont thinks its a *terrible* album, but i cant help but feel that they didnt put their best into AT ALL. Go ahead and love it, you have every right to. Music is subjective. But I personally think its their worst.
For the record, i DO like PL.
BTW, apologies for any typos, i wrote this from my phone.
Kenneth R.
Cináed
@ TrapsMaster come on man, all the regulars know I take everything to extremes. :metal:
don't be so strung up Traps.
don't be so strung up Traps.
You forgot to mention that Russell Allen is so "grrr bastards burn" on this album.
Parts where I agree:
1. Lack of keyboard. Yeah, definitely poor Pinnella doesn`t get what he deserves here. The Lords of Chaos is the best example I think.
2. Some quotes: "We are strong - We will stand and fight" and first 2 verses of When All is Lost and almost entire Light Up the Night lyrics are really bad.
3. Allen is sometimes trying way too hard and sounds awful, like in the beginning of Prometheus (I am Alive)
4. Songwriting is not that good, but only when it comes to The End of Innocence (typical), Light Up the Night (average) and it`s hard to tell, but I think Children and The Lords are on purpose made almost boring on the second stanza and repeated chorus, then suddenly the rhytm, melody and atmosphere is changed and it becomes really badass (third stanzas of Children & The Lords are really incredible, I love them). Also, Dehumanized chorus is a little bit too long and Prometheus intro and solo could have been made longer.
Parts where I don`t agree (let the game begin):
1. When keyboard is on, it`s freaking amazing. This album is very rarely focused on Pinella, almost always it`s in the background. But you know what? I don`t mind! Iconoclast, The End of Innocence intro, solo and chorus; Dehumanized intro and third stanza + instrumental; Bastards of the Machine; Heretic intro; Prometheus intro and so on, it`s just just amusing, so weird, melodic and progressive sound.
2. and 3. I love those lyrics. Some of them are my favorites of all time, like Prometheus - the perfect description of the totalitarian system mostly from the dictator`s point of view. Also, Heretic as the machines explaining why they`re turning humans into robots; then that`s strange part that we should trust heretics tearing down the tyranny and that amazing "speech" from a human point of view that he is changed inside, he`s no himself anymore and there`s no way to rescue him. That`s pretty good, strong lyrics for me. Of course they are over the top and even a little bit brutal, but SX`s music and Allen`s voice for me is always over the top, so lyrics just fits perfectly to the atmosphere. I think Russell was born to sing and scream lyrics like these. He enjoys while doing it so much, the entire band is enjoying it so much like it`s the best thing you can do in your life. Happiness is literally flooding your ears. And of course, some of these quotes are just so badass and powerful: "No escape - I`m dead inside" "Rise of the One, the dark Iconoclast, forging the cult of fear" "Infection spreads in the blood of the damned" "Set your soul on fire" and like 30 more of those. It continues the idea of PL lyrics with also many great quotes like "I`m the Master of Illusion - Minister of Sin - Two-faced snake - wicked - sheding skin". Really that good or with a lot of message? No. Epic as never before? Hell yeah.
4. Songwriting of this album is absolutely amazing, I will never forget main riff arise in Iconoclast and "Victory or death!" moment, Reign in Madness intro and chorus and much, MUCH more very memorable ideas. There are like hundreds of them, I can`t even comprehend all of those.
5. Cover of the special edition is in my opinion the best metal album cover ever. The masks as a society metaphore is really amazing. That 3 or 2 faces are mysterious and even kind of scary.
6. SX is finally heavy and fast as it should be, but still very weird and specific. This album is almost pure "normal" metal that we`ve heard thousand times before, but with so many elements made different in new SX ways, it`s so refreshing, there is so much passion and effort put into it that I can`t say it`s a flaw. This is the perfect remake and reboot of the 80's. It`s like all bands (including SX of course) mixed together and this is our rock'n'roll cocktail. I think this was the very dangerous move, maybe on of the most dangerous in history of music, it could become a shit very easy but there was like 1% chance that this will be the best album ever made. And they did it. It`s not just good, it`s the absolute masterpiece. BUT I think they should end this style on Iconoclast, there is no way that another rock'n'roll cocktail will be better than any average metal. I`m glad they trying something different now.
It`s full of flaws, but you know what? There are no great advantages without great flaws.
Paradise Lost on the other hand is almost completely different than this and review would be almost nothing like that one, but it`s only a little bit worse than Iconoclast.
Wow, I finally described for the first time ever why I love this album. And this is just like 20% of what I wanted to say. My life is complete now But seriously, sometimes that`s annoying that none of my friends listens to them.
Parts where I agree:
1. Lack of keyboard. Yeah, definitely poor Pinnella doesn`t get what he deserves here. The Lords of Chaos is the best example I think.
2. Some quotes: "We are strong - We will stand and fight" and first 2 verses of When All is Lost and almost entire Light Up the Night lyrics are really bad.
3. Allen is sometimes trying way too hard and sounds awful, like in the beginning of Prometheus (I am Alive)
4. Songwriting is not that good, but only when it comes to The End of Innocence (typical), Light Up the Night (average) and it`s hard to tell, but I think Children and The Lords are on purpose made almost boring on the second stanza and repeated chorus, then suddenly the rhytm, melody and atmosphere is changed and it becomes really badass (third stanzas of Children & The Lords are really incredible, I love them). Also, Dehumanized chorus is a little bit too long and Prometheus intro and solo could have been made longer.
Parts where I don`t agree (let the game begin):
1. When keyboard is on, it`s freaking amazing. This album is very rarely focused on Pinella, almost always it`s in the background. But you know what? I don`t mind! Iconoclast, The End of Innocence intro, solo and chorus; Dehumanized intro and third stanza + instrumental; Bastards of the Machine; Heretic intro; Prometheus intro and so on, it`s just just amusing, so weird, melodic and progressive sound.
2. and 3. I love those lyrics. Some of them are my favorites of all time, like Prometheus - the perfect description of the totalitarian system mostly from the dictator`s point of view. Also, Heretic as the machines explaining why they`re turning humans into robots; then that`s strange part that we should trust heretics tearing down the tyranny and that amazing "speech" from a human point of view that he is changed inside, he`s no himself anymore and there`s no way to rescue him. That`s pretty good, strong lyrics for me. Of course they are over the top and even a little bit brutal, but SX`s music and Allen`s voice for me is always over the top, so lyrics just fits perfectly to the atmosphere. I think Russell was born to sing and scream lyrics like these. He enjoys while doing it so much, the entire band is enjoying it so much like it`s the best thing you can do in your life. Happiness is literally flooding your ears. And of course, some of these quotes are just so badass and powerful: "No escape - I`m dead inside" "Rise of the One, the dark Iconoclast, forging the cult of fear" "Infection spreads in the blood of the damned" "Set your soul on fire" and like 30 more of those. It continues the idea of PL lyrics with also many great quotes like "I`m the Master of Illusion - Minister of Sin - Two-faced snake - wicked - sheding skin". Really that good or with a lot of message? No. Epic as never before? Hell yeah.
4. Songwriting of this album is absolutely amazing, I will never forget main riff arise in Iconoclast and "Victory or death!" moment, Reign in Madness intro and chorus and much, MUCH more very memorable ideas. There are like hundreds of them, I can`t even comprehend all of those.
5. Cover of the special edition is in my opinion the best metal album cover ever. The masks as a society metaphore is really amazing. That 3 or 2 faces are mysterious and even kind of scary.
6. SX is finally heavy and fast as it should be, but still very weird and specific. This album is almost pure "normal" metal that we`ve heard thousand times before, but with so many elements made different in new SX ways, it`s so refreshing, there is so much passion and effort put into it that I can`t say it`s a flaw. This is the perfect remake and reboot of the 80's. It`s like all bands (including SX of course) mixed together and this is our rock'n'roll cocktail. I think this was the very dangerous move, maybe on of the most dangerous in history of music, it could become a shit very easy but there was like 1% chance that this will be the best album ever made. And they did it. It`s not just good, it`s the absolute masterpiece. BUT I think they should end this style on Iconoclast, there is no way that another rock'n'roll cocktail will be better than any average metal. I`m glad they trying something different now.
It`s full of flaws, but you know what? There are no great advantages without great flaws.
Paradise Lost on the other hand is almost completely different than this and review would be almost nothing like that one, but it`s only a little bit worse than Iconoclast.
Wow, I finally described for the first time ever why I love this album. And this is just like 20% of what I wanted to say. My life is complete now
But seriously, sometimes that`s annoying that none of my friends listens to them.
Progbass
Member
They were always heavy but the difference was that they had diversity, I see almost none of that in IC.
I think if they had taken a couple songs from IC and had them put on an album that was more diverse overall they would be pretty cool "harder" more "straight forward" styles of songs; however, its just the fact that pretty much all of IC were these types of songs so it got boring and redundant quite fast. The other major problem is the sound was just overly loud. There are a lot of "loudness war" albums that I have listened to that didn't bother me like they did others, but with IC it definately bothered me.
I honestly think the last 2 albums have been lackluster due to the fact that they were both pretty much fully written by Romeo alone and weren't really "band effort" albums. I know that Jason Rullo doesn't even live in the same state as the others anymore, and it could even be the same for some other members as well for all I know. I also think that they write better albums when Romeo is inspired by literature/myth/history because those are things that really seem to get his creativity going, which seemed to be missing from the last couple albums. PL was just pretty much the song tDWoT theme stretched out for a full album. If they had to take the concept of a past epic song to make a new full album then that means he probably didn't have much inspiration at the time. That would be like if the next album was just The Odyssey stretched out to make a full album. Also, the "technology taking over" theme of IC seems to have just been improvised after Romeo and Pinella took a liking to the machine/futuristic sound they played with on the synthesizer while writing music.
Last point I would like to make is that if IC is your favorite album then fine; however, you really can't expect anyone here to agree with you since probably 95% of the small number of people that visit here still have been around for 15 or more years and would of course prefer the older SyX style. The number of people and amount of activity here used to actually be very healthy and I truly believe the decline started happening when the PL era came along. Maybe a little before because there was just so many years between the release of The Odyssey and PL.
I honestly think the last 2 albums have been lackluster due to the fact that they were both pretty much fully written by Romeo alone and weren't really "band effort" albums. I know that Jason Rullo doesn't even live in the same state as the others anymore, and it could even be the same for some other members as well for all I know. I also think that they write better albums when Romeo is inspired by literature/myth/history because those are things that really seem to get his creativity going, which seemed to be missing from the last couple albums. PL was just pretty much the song tDWoT theme stretched out for a full album. If they had to take the concept of a past epic song to make a new full album then that means he probably didn't have much inspiration at the time. That would be like if the next album was just The Odyssey stretched out to make a full album. Also, the "technology taking over" theme of IC seems to have just been improvised after Romeo and Pinella took a liking to the machine/futuristic sound they played with on the synthesizer while writing music.
Last point I would like to make is that if IC is your favorite album then fine; however, you really can't expect anyone here to agree with you since probably 95% of the small number of people that visit here still have been around for 15 or more years and would of course prefer the older SyX style. The number of people and amount of activity here used to actually be very healthy and I truly believe the decline started happening when the PL era came along. Maybe a little before because there was just so many years between the release of The Odyssey and PL.
In other bands that have normal lyrics this could be a problem, but in SX I don`t see any. Why? When I discover these albums and was listening to them while reading their lyrics, I didn`t even realize they`re all about Lucifer`s mind/domination of technology. They`re so unclear, ambiguous, random and weird. When I read about it on Wikipedia, I was like "Seriously? All of those are based on the same idea?" This fact explained few things, but Seven, The Lords of Chaos, The End of Innocence and Revelation are still deep mystery to me, just what the hell is going on there?
So I don`t think it`s a problem, whatever subject Romeo chooses, he still uses the same words to describe it and most of the time you have no idea what he`s talking about (deciphering Heretic took me 11 months
)
Kenneth R.
Cináed
Eh, normal lyrics are shit. You mean stuff like "darkness" "eternity" "reality" and "night" and all those other metal cliche words? I've had enough of songs about how it sucks to work at CVS or how bands wish they could ride dragons with naked women instead of sitting in their mom's basement.
Myth and literature have the potential to inspire intelligent lyrics. So do other topics, sure. It's not so much the topic as the treatment. People who write bad lyrics will write bad lyrics no matter the topic, and people who write good ones can use even mundane concepts to invoke deep questions.
Myth and literature have the potential to inspire intelligent lyrics. So do other topics, sure. It's not so much the topic as the treatment. People who write bad lyrics will write bad lyrics no matter the topic, and people who write good ones can use even mundane concepts to invoke deep questions.
I love SX lyrics, Romeo & Allen wrote one of my favourite texts ever. Much better than average metal lyrics - if they`re easy to understand, I don`t buy it.
But please, don`t say this band is not using cliche words.
Hell - fire - flames - sky - soul - eyes - darkness - god - pain - war - blood -flesh... sounds familiar?
People are sensationalizing and bloating IC's shortcomings. Because When All Is Lost has a cringe-worthy lyric (that I've read in comments from the past) it suddenly metastasizes to "a bad stanza" followed by the band being scrutinized for having "terrible" lyrics in their songs. The fact of the matter is that IC and PL really are the most consistent albums SX has made, although with that said they do not have the highs (or lows) of their predecessors, nor can they claim to be the band's best albums.
Also, it's welcome to see the forum somewhat active again.
Also, it's welcome to see the forum somewhat active again.
uhhhhmmmm4
Jesus Machine
I dont entirely disagree, but i also don't think it is a positive thing. Especially with IC. its TOO consistent, to the point where I find they all start to sound pretty much the same. There just isnt much variety, and it basically puts me to sleep.
Postulate
Have a nice day! :)
- Jul 17, 2008
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I don't know, when I listen to it all I can think is how great Jason Rullo is and how unfortunate it is that he's not using his talents to play something better.
As for everyone else, I CAN'T HEAR THEM LOL
Kenneth R.
Cináed
"hit the switch, you son of a bitch" is still one of the greatest lyrics ever written. Symphony X thought, "how can we top The Count of Tuscany with just one line?"
Really though, I don't have a problem with that line at all.
Really though, I don't have a problem with that line at all.
It`s not that hard, really. The Count of Tuscany is a masterpiece, but lyrics are something like 4/10.
