Label: Music Theories Recordings / Mascot Label Group
Release date: July 27, 2018
Production: Michael Romeo
Album length: 53:06
Rating: 9 / 10
Michael Romeo is one of those musical aces who belongs in the league of the generation’s finest guitarists, alongside virtuosos like Tony MacAlpine, Kiko Loureiro, Marty Friedman, John Petrucci and so on… That means that on top of the outstanding hand skills of a polished guitar technique, this neoclassically chiseled virtuoso is also a proper shredder, which will of course pique the interest of heavy metal fans in no time. He’s best known as a member of Symphony X, where he has also called the shots for all the years the band has existed. »War Of Worlds Pt. 1« is his second solo studio album. The first, titled »The Dark Chapter«, came out way back in 1994, the same year as Symphony X’s self-titled debut.
Michael Romeo has always been the main pillar of Symphony X’s musical statement. All of the band’s music “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 solely on the evolving shoulders of Michael Romeo. From there it’s not hard to conclude that »War Of Worlds Pt. 1« is very likely close to Symphony X’s foundational works in compositional terms. Exactly. The album carries a concept. It’s inspired by the famous novel by English writer H.G. Wells, »The War Of Worlds«, which, given the themes Symphony X like to touch on throughout their career, hardly comes as a surprise. So it’s black and, of course, gloomy.
The album works like a post-apocalyptic opera, and it would make a great film soundtrack too. It boasts a sharp, massive production. The hefty, reinforced-concrete sound that Romeo produces in his unstoppable cannonade of phrasing is, in the album’s overall sonic picture, strongly accentuated when you compare it with the production of Symohony X’s latest records. In other words, the guitar absolutely dominates this one. At the same time, it develops a distinctly musical allure and singability. Even though it’s soaked in ultrasonic guitar shredding and the built-in unbridled wildness of outstanding guitar solos, the early period of Symphony X’s creative career shines through this album as well. It plays like the dark brother of »Chapter V: The New Mithology Suite«, only with a far better production, naturally. The likely peak of the album, bringing together the energetic, expressive side of that Symphony X record and »War Of Worlds Pt. 1«, is definitely the track Believe. Especially thanks to the abundant symphonic orchestral arrangements and the vocal approach of the excellent Rick Castellano, who sticks, throughout, to clean, highly melodic singing. If you swapped his vocals for the approach Symphony X singer Russell Allen has taken (since »Odyssey«), Symphony X could easily put their name to »War Of Worlds Pt. 1«. So that the whole story of Michael Romeo’s new solo studio album doesn’t come off as quite so “black and white,” there are moments on the album that Romeo would most likely have had a hard time allowing himself while writing music for Symphony X. Fucking Robots is one, an extremely bristling and especially dark track with a very bold programmed pattern that vividly brings to life the rise and uprising of robots and machines out to dominate humanity.
This is an album that all fans of the noblest mastery of six-string theory simply have to check out, as long as you set aside the progressive approaches that various bands of the new era, the new generation, like Beyond Creation, Animals As Leaders and beyond, introduced into the realm of metal a good while ago. Fans of the music of those bands will find »War Of Worlds Pt. 1« “outdated,” if not mildly boring. Otherwise, though, this album is tailor-made for true Symphony X fans, and for anything that, in compositional terms, taps into the refined, filigree fine mechanics of Michael Romeo’s “hands of God.”
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
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
Line-up:
Michael Romeo – guitar, keyboards, orchestrations
Rick Castellano – vocals
John DeServio – bass guitar
John Macaluso – drums
