Rod Tyler

Rod Tyler was Symphony X's first singer, a member between 1994 and 1995. His voice is on the self-titled debut, Symphony X (1994), recorded when the group was still essentially a studio project put together by Michael Romeo out of the demo The Dark Chapter. That album is more direct and less orchestral than anything the band would do afterwards: the structures are still short, Michael Pinnella's keyboard accompanies rather than duels, and the music owes more to 1980s neoclassical metal than to the symphonic conception that would follow. It is, for that reason, the only record of Symphony X before its own formula. Tyler left the band in 1995 and was replaced by Russell Allen, who took over from The Damnation Game (1995) and remains to this day. Little has been publicly documented about his later musical activity.