Saturday night Jason Heidi and I went to my favorite out of town venue the Starland Ballroom to see New Jersey's hometown heroes, Symphony X. Their bassist Mike Lepond played in the Ross the Boss Manowar show with Keith and I have sang his praises on this blog before.
If you are unfamiliar with the band, they are the more hard rocking, down to earth foil for Dream Theater in the prog rock scene. The analogy I always make is they are the Rolling Stones to Dream Theater's Beatles. They are fulfilling a LOT of fantasies by touring together in Europe later this year. As DT are arguably the leaders in terms of pushing forward progressive music and being better artists, there is something amazingly earthbound about SymphX. They are drunks. They are accessible. They will talk to you. Heidi thought Russell waved at us as they left the stage before the encore. I wouldn't be surprised if Russell did remember us from Dingbatz. They are that kind of band. Drink whiskey with them and you have friends for life.
The set was almost identical to the one they did at BB King's a few months earlier. Most of the new record, and some great old favorites like "Smoke and Mirrors." I'm sorry to say but for the second time now, I was bored out of my skull during the encore of all 20 minutes of "The Odyssey" in its entirety. Jason nailed it. It is not a cohesive epic like Dream Theater's "A Change of Seasons." It feels like they wanted to write a 20 minute song and sewed a lot of incongruous parts together. It sounds stilted and forced. But anyways.....
Russell Allen is a frontman and a half. He must be about 6'4 and 300 pounds. A gargantuan of a man with a very powerful and commanding presence. Michael Romeo is now getting into "faster than Yngwie" territory with his chops. As the BB King's show was very loose and casual, the Starland set was tight and polished and sharp. Good stuff, a great end to a very long week of rock shows.
