CD Review: Symphony X - The Divine Wings Of Tragedy

Released in 1997, The Divine Wings Of Tragedy is the third album by progressive power metal band Symphony X. It was at this point where people literally suddenly jumped up (I’m assuming here) and shouted at the peak of their voices, “Who the fuck are these guys? They’re great!”

It’s unsurprising that the album title sounds not unlike Judas Priest’s Sad Wings Of Destiny. I assume this is an etymological influence here, an overt reference perhaps. I doubt there’s a single power metal band to not have been touched by the metal studded fingers of Rob Halford and co. Their early material providing the grounding for most of the hallmarks of the genre, and of course they later went onto define power metal in the most vivid sense with 1990’s Painkiller, one of the greatest metal albums ever released (certainly in this reviewer’s top five).

Beyond that, but whilst we’re talking about influential facets, in his review of the Gigantour in August, Chris Beaumont posits that they are similarities of Symphony X to the music of the mighty Dream Theater, and this I agree with. But I would go beyond that to put forth an idea that early Dream Theater influenced Symphony X (on top of the more metal-based influences), and that later Dream Theater is influenced by Symphony X. Although it’s probably more accurate to say that later Dream Theater is simply influenced by heavy modern metal in general, but certainly some of the riffs on this album wouldn’t seem out of place on Train Of Thought.

So the album then, eight songs, sixty-five minutes of heavy progressively-infused power metal.

The lyrics are the usual stuff you get in this bastion of music, metaphysical negativity, allusions of historicity (the Egyptian themed ‘Pharaoh’) etc. But if I wanted to see majestic poetry dripping with profundity I’d listen to Dylan, that’s not what this is about.

No, this is about the mighty playing of one Michael Romeo. He may look a bit like Yngwie Malmsteen (there’s a hint of the corpulence in him), but unlike Malmsteen he plays for the song. Don’t get me wrong when Malmsteen’s good he’s great, but beyond the first couple of albums it all gets excessively patchy, there’s only so many ways you can play a minor-scale neck-pickup flurry of notes. Romeo is much more song-orientated, he’s about how the music sounds, not “here’s the bit where I play 16th notes at 200bpm for a minute and a half”.

Article Author: Aaron Fleming

Aaron Fleming is a waster and an idler - prone to pomposity - forever enchanted by the filmic and the sonic, words and the aesthetic - given to the most ludicrous appraisal of Culture's finest icons and compositions. He resides in London.

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