I listened to the new Michael Romeo single out of curiosity!
It was a pretty good Symphony X song. It sounds exactly like SymX, and even has a Russel Allen clone singing in it. Honestly I really thought it was Russel at first, and had to double check to be sure it really wasn't him.
Why not use Russel instead? I'm sure he isn't too busy nowadays..
When it was time to do another Symphony X album, Russell was still recovering from the Adrenaline Mob accident. Romeo then signed a deal for two albums, and recorded almost everything at once. When the first one came out I interviewed him and the drummer of these albums, John Macaluso, and both mentioned that part II was already 75% done. I think Symphony X is working on a new album, and have the best intentions to continue their anniversary tour, covid allowing. The timing for this second Romeo album is a little bit off, but I'll take it for what it is. He's a perfectionist, and wouldn't want to tour to promote this album unless the orchestral parts - of which there are many - could be played by an orchestra. So it's highly unlikely that he will play this material live in any capacity.
About the vocals, it seems he can never get it right, in the minds of the fans. When the first one came out, I read a lot of "yeah, cool album, but the vocals are way too different from Russell's, and I always associate this type of music with Russel Allen". Now he has Dino, who can pretty much sing ANYTHING, and people are complaining that he's sounding too much like Russell...
Here's Dino doing a song from a short-lived project called Stone Leaders, which was spearheaded by John MAcaluso, and sounds a lot like Ark:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWR_EyFa_nc Also, Dino was part of Dirty Honey, a project with George Lynch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9cPMNI4JS0 He also created this - what if a LTE siong had vocals?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeMCAOIXPxA