Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Romeo, Michael
Label: Music Theories Recordings
Released: 2018
Length: 53:06
Rating: 4.5/5
Michael Romeo is one of those musical aces who belongs in the league of the greatest guitarists of his generation, a club that includes virtuosos à la Tony MacAlpine, Kiko Loureiro, Marty Friedman, John Petrucci and so on… That means that on top of the outrageous hand skills of a thoroughly honed guitar technique, this neoclassically chiseled virtuoso is also a proper shredder, which will of course instantly get heavy metal fans interested too. He’s best known as a member of Symphony X, which he has also led for the band’s entire existence. »War Of Worlds Pt. 1« is his second solo studio album. The first, titled »The Dark Chapter«, came out way back in 1994, just like the self-titled debut of Symphony X.
Michael Romeo has always been the main pillar of Symphony X’s musical statement. All the music in Symphony X »falls« and »grows« out of his ideas, his compositional structures, and the specific style and sound that his guitar vocabulary has established and defined over the years, resting squarely on Michael Romeo’s evolutionary shoulders. From there it’s not hard to conclude that »War Of Worlds Pt. 1« is, compositionally, very likely close to the foundational works of Symphony X. Exactly so. The album carries a concept. It’s inspired by the famous novel by English writer H.G. Wells, called »The War Of Worlds«, which, given the themes Symphony X like to touch on throughout their career, isn’t surprising at all. So it’s black and, of course, gloomy.
The album works like a post-apocalyptic opera, and it would function great as a film soundtrack too. It boasts a sharp-edged, massive production. The beefy, reinforced-concrete-heavy sound that Romeo produces in his unstoppable cannonade of phrasing is, in the overall sonic picture of the album, even more pronounced when you compare it with the production of the most recent Symphony X albums. Which means the guitar absolutely dominates this record. At the same time, it develops a distinctly musical allure and singability. Even though it’s saturated with ultrasonic guitar shredding and the built-in wildness of exceptional guitar solos, the early period of Symphony X’s creative career shines through this album too. It feels like the dark brother of »Chapter V: The New Mithology Suite«, only, of course, far better produced. The probable peak of the album, the one that brings together the energetic, expressive side of that Symphony X record and »War Of Worlds Pt. 1«, is certainly the song Believe. Especially thanks to its abundance of symphonic orchestral arrangements and the vocal approach of the excellent Rick Castellano, who sticks, from start to finish, to purely clean, highly melodic singing. If you swapped his vocals for the kind of approach Symphony X singer Russell Allen has taken (after the album »Odyssey«), the band Symphony X could easily put their name to »War Of Worlds Pt. 1«. To keep the whole story of Michael Romeo’s new solo studio album from being so »black and white«, there are moments on the record that Romeo would most likely have had a hard time getting away with when composing for Symphony X. One of those is Fucking Robots, an extremely pissed-off and especially dark track featuring a very boldly embedded programmed pattern that vividly brings to life the rise and uprising of robots and machines to overpower humanity.
This is an album that all fans of the noblest mastery of six-string theory absolutely have to check out, though you’ll want to set aside the progressive approaches that various bands of the new era, the new generation, like Beyond Creation, Animals As Leaders and the like, introduced to the realm of metal quite a while back. Fans of the music of those aforementioned bands will find »War Of Worlds Pt. 1« »outdated«, if not mildly boring. Otherwise, though, this is an album tailor-made for true Symphony X fans and for anything that, in terms of compositional expression, touches the refined, filigree fine mechanics of Michael Romeo’s »godly hands«.
Lineup
Michael Romeo – guitar, keyboards, orchestrations
Rick Castellano – vocals
John DeServio – bass
John Macaluso – drums
Production
Mihcaael Romeo
Tracklist
01. Introduction
02. Fear Of The Unknown
03. Black
04. F*cking Robotos
05. Djinn
06. Believe
07. Difference
08. War Machine
09. Oblivion
10. Constellations
