SYMPHONY X Frontman Says He's Been Working On Solo Album For Last Four Years

Zach Shaw of Metal Insider recently conducted an interview with SYMPHONY X/ADRENALINE MOB vocalist Russell Allen. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Metal Insider: "Iconoclast" marks [SYMPHONY X's] first album via Nuclear Blast Records. Looking back almost a year after the album's release, has Nuclear Blast met up to SYMPHONY X's expectations?

Russell: Yes and no. I think they've done a really good job. They're really enthusiastic, they love the record. I think we need a little more time to answer that question. But to this point, they're very enthusiastic and very supportive, and I have no bad things to say. I think they're doing a great job. I don't know what's really going on in Europe, but I haven't really gotten any information about that. But here in America, I love the people here. Loana at the label is a great rep. She really does a lot to help all their bands. So I like them, I like working with them, but I think time is going to tell and see whether or not the impact has been made. The jury is still out.

Metal Insider: Fair enough. What were some of the deciding factors for signing with Nuclear Blast in the first place?

Russell: We wanted to grow the band, and get out there and get more exposure. Just trying to increase our exposure to the world, and get more people into the music. That was the whole goal, to go with a label like that. We had bigger offers from other companies, but it wasn't really about the money. It was about a company that really believed in our band and wanted to grow the band. So that's the decision we went with. And we're still waiting for that whole thing to pan out. It takes a full album cycle to really see how it goes.

Metal Insider: You've been sitting on music from both ADRENALINE MOB and SYMPHONY X for a while now. As a musician, was that hard for you to do?

Russell: No. I've got a solo album I've been working on for four fucking years now. Talk about sitting on music! [laughs]. And it's killing me because it's good, but I've learned my lesson now. I've sat on it for too long, and I let it change too much. If you sit on something too long, it starts to lose that initial magic that you had when you composed it. And you start to change it and tweak it to the point where it's not even recognizable anymore. I made some mistakes, but then on the flip side to that there's some other gems that I found that took me a long time to get. So certain songs suffered, but other ones have come along real nicely. The ones that suffered, I might just cut, go back to the original. It can be frustrating, but I'm used to it. This is what I do for a living. I sing on stuff, and it doesn't sometimes get released until a year or two later. It is what it is.

Metal Insider: Do you see a release date in the future for your solo stuff?

Russell: No [laughs], not at all.

Metal Insider: You were saying how style-wise it's changed so much, but would you say your solo material sounds similar to your two current bands or something completely different?

Russell: Completely different. It's more of a classic metal/rock sounding thing. I have a lot of classic influences. My stuff is retro, I guess you could say. We're talking about like '70s, early '80s. I mean, I love Dio, I loved him in RAINBOW, I love DEEP PURPLE, VAN HALEN, LED ZEPPELIN, all of the bands that were before my time. So I have a lot of that in my solo work. Very soulful, groove-based music, but it has a little more of a metal feel, I guess, a little more epic. It's just different from anything else that I do. It's me.

Read the entire interview from Metal Insider.