POLL: Which era of Symphony X do you like more?

[Nick]

Here's a fun fact for you from the people who don't think there is a defining line in SX's music.

I was posting on a Dream Theater message board in the General Music Symphony X thread once. The discussion was about the band's latest album, and a large number of people were saying the band was growing too heavy, too guitar centered, was losing the progressive side, and people were wishing they'd sound more like Divine Wings.

It was November 2000, on the old Dream Theater EZ Board, and the album being discussed as being too heavy was V.

There you go.

I wasn't a fun back then so it's hard to get a good perspective, would be cool to go back and look at that discussion.

[The Dark Master]

I chose the 1995-2002 era.  I discovered the band with Twilight in Olympus, and V almost instantly became my favourite SX album when I first heard it.  Both of those albums are still very close to my heart, as well as (to a lesser extent) Damnation Game and TDWOT.  I was a bit disappointed with Odyssey, mostly because a) I absolutely hated the guitar heavy mix that practically buried the keyboards in most of the songs, as I loved the symphonic mix of V, and b) song writing wise, I felt it was something of a regression back to the style of Divine Wings, and I had wanted the band to continue to develop the more grand, suite-oriented style of V.  With that said, I still love the album, it has some of SX's best songs and overall, it is still on par with the the quality of the other SX albums from that era.

As for PL and Iconoclast; I love both of those albums, but they simply lack that special something that V and Twilight had.  I don't really think it is the heaviness of the recent records, and the only consistent trend in SX's history has been to get heavier and that has never bothered me before.  Rather, I think it is their conscious decision to move away from a symphonic-driven style to a more straight forward metal base.

[MetalMike06]

I got into them via The Odyssey, not too long after that album came out. Then I got Divine Wings, V, and eventually the rest. Odyssey and DWOT are still my favorites.

I remember Wicked was the first song I ever heard of theirs where I experienced the "Whoa, that was pretty goddamn uninpsired" feeling. The Odyssey was something of a swansong for their enjoyable era for me. Songs like Inferno, Awakenings, and The Odyssey all are pretty damn strong throughout but the remaining tracks all come across as something they slapped together in a very limited timeframe after spending all their time refining the actual good tracks.

I'm still infinitely frustrated at how poorly executed the entirety of Paradise Lost was. The music flat out sucked compared to what they're capable of even though they took 4 years and 7 months to put it out which was nearly twice as long as their previous longest between-albums duration of 31 months between Twilight in Olympus and V: The New Mythology Suite. It gets even worse when you realize they were putting out gems like The Damnation game, The Divine Wings of Tragedy, and Twilight in Olympus with these super-close release dates:

The Damnation Game                     August 1995 (less than a year after the previous album)
The Divines Wings of Tragedy          January 1997 (17 months after the previous album)
Twilight in Olympus                         March 1998 (14 months after the previous album)
V: The New Mythology Suite            October 2000 (31 months after the previous album)

A big FYI: They weren't a touring band until after V was released, from what I've read (aside from a few shows in Japan in the DWOT/TiO era). That probably has a lot to do with why the albums were released so close to each other.

[black_biff_stadler]

That only excuses a part of why it took so long but still doesn't account for the drastic falling off in creativity. Each of the last two albums have taken at least 4 years to come out and are remarkably less varied and creative than any of the previous six albums including the debut which gets zero love despite having numerous excellent tracks.