Michael Romeo

Michael Romeo is the founder, guitarist, principal composer and producer of Symphony X — the band exists as a direct projection of what he writes. Born in New Jersey in 1968, he assembled the group in 1994 out of the demo The Dark Chapter, and has since combined the roles that in most bands are split between three or four people. His writing starts from art music and film, not from rock. Romeo works with counterpoint of baroque origin, harmonic minor scales and orchestration conceived in layers — the result is a metal that sounds composed rather than arranged, and that sustains fifteen-minute structures without resorting to repetition. His guitar combines extremely fast picking with violin-like phrasing, and the duel with Michael Pinnella's keyboards is the group's sonic signature. That grounding also explains the concept albums: V: The New Mythology Suite (2000) draws on Egyptian myth and Atlantis, The Odyssey (2002) has a twenty-four-minute title track based on Homer, and Paradise Lost (2007) adapts John Milton's poem. These are the projects of someone who thinks of an album as a closed work. He records and produces the material in his own studio. Outside the band he keeps a solo career with War of the Worlds Pt. 1 (2018) and Pt. 2 (2022), openly cinematic in conception.