Not long after the release of the album, vocalist Rod Tyler left the band, ostensibly due to musical differences. In his place, the band asked Russell Allen to come on board and replace him. Coincidentally, a few months earlier Tyler had introduced Allen to the band’s drummer Thomas Miller, so when it came to filling that vacancy his name came up front and centre.
At this point of the band’s career, they were not a touring band, they were simply a studio project. This left the five piece to return to the studio to work on the band’s sophomore album. While all of the new tracks on the follow up album would be credited to the band as a whole, it was Romeo and Pinella who did the heavy lifting when it came to creating the songs and the structure they would work under. After the debut album, it was felt that Russell Allen had a better range and a more powerful output that the band could put to use on this album, looking to build on that debut by producing songs that not only incorporated the flourishing progressive metal element of their music with a faster tempo and also the major facets of Allen’s vocals.
All of this came together and was recorded in New Jersey, while also finding a distributor to have the album released through Europe as well, where both band and record company believed the album would do well. Thus came the dawn of “The Damnation Game”, just 11 months on from their debut release, and the next big step in the burgeoning career of Symphony X.
This album kicks off with the title track “The Damnation Game”, a rollicking progressive power metal opening that was a standard of the time, the mix of guitar and keys playing into and out of their perspective is a great base. The first appearance of Russell Allen on vocals is still as superb as the first time you hear him, just straight into sheer domination of the track. Comparatively against the band’s material further down the track, you can hear on this song that the sound is still being developed that would be their signature. It lacks the genuine power and authority and production that would come, but it still is a great opening to the album. The playoff between Romeo and Pinella here is as strong as it always is with this pair. Lyrically it covers the story of humans being in a game conducted by the gods, and Allen’s vocals bring that sense of helplessness and rage to the surface. This segues almost straight into “Dressed to Kill”, with a heavier riff from Romeo and wonderfully duelled harmony vocals from Allen within. The atmosphere provided by soaring keys in sections doesn’t quite produce the same power that would come later in the band’s catalogue, in a similar way to the opening track you can hear that all of the tools are here but the band is still finding its way around the toolshed in order to utilise them properly.
“The Edge of Forever” is the nine minute epic that most bands look to bring into the mix towards the end of an album, but for this band, we’ll slap it straight in your face early on. It would become a signature move of the band moving forward. It’s an epic because it really morphs two straight genre traps into one. It does want to exhibit the epic power ballad focus at different moments of the song, but its drawing power is through the fast driven off-the-rails duelling of Romeo’s guitar and Pinella’s keys, ably supported by Jason Rullo’s amazing drumming. Progressive metal of course allows you to mix both efforts into the one song and still label it as such, and that is very much the case here on “The Edge of Forever”. Russell Allen’s ability to vocalise both the soft and heavy with the slight change of emotion is incredible and he does it amazingly well here. “Savage Curtain” changes focus completely, starting with the heavy riffing guitar, and then the fabulously accompanying bassline from Thomas Miller that cranks up the album. They then both accompany and playoff against each other in the middle solo section, combining with Pinella’s keys and Rullo’s drumming to complete a terrific track.
“Whispers” finds itself back in the power side of their music, softer and soaring rather than powerful and heavy. These kinds of songs do make a connection with some fans of the genre but are a hard sell to the majority. “The Haunting” brings us back up to speed, Michael Romeo is back on song and riffing and soloing through this song at speed, getting that tempo back up to code. It moves through several different stages in the song, from powerful and sorrowful as well as atmospheric, but most importantly is of a style that you can easily identify as the bands own. Romeo and Pinella’s solo spot is a highlight of the track. “Secrets” brings with it a formula that the band was still toying with at this stage of their development, and while it is a good solid song it does reveal a structure that sometimes feels a bit colour by numbers. Enjoyable all the same.
The album finishes with “A Winters Dream – Prelude (Part 1)” and “A Winters Dream – The Ascension (Part II)”. Prelude is the softly inro to the track, Allen’s vocals being the main showcase over Pinella’s keys, setting the scene for the ascent into The Ascension. Here the whole mood changes, moving into the true metal part of the song, where each members contribution rises to the heights of the track, driving to the end with all guns blazing, as Russell Allen completes his initial journey with a tour de force, and stamps his mark on the band as a result.
My introduction to Symphony X came in 2004, almost a decade after this album’s release. At the time I had been searching for new bands and new albums, and having enjoyed a dive into both Dream Theater in recent times, along with a whole bunch of power metal bands from Europe, I was still looking for anything new that I may have missed and would regret if I didn’t investigate further. That band happened to be Symphony X, and the album was “The Odyssey”, and it got me in hard. It had the kind of music and vocals and songs that I was looking for, and the natural progression from this point was to investigate the rest of the band’s catalogue. Which is where their first five albums appeared on my radar. And because I was looking in bulk, I found all of these albums together, and so I discovered them all together as well. Sometimes that can be a great way to discover and binge a new band, and sometimes it can have the opposite effect. To be honest, I’m not sure how this affected the way I discovered this album in particular. The fact that the self-titled debut had had a different vocalist was worth noting immediately, and for me Russell Allen was always a better candidate than Rod Tyler. On top of this, the songs here were better written, better structured. I felt as though there was a better purpose in the song writing that went about having Russell on hand for vocals. His work not only on lead vocal but in the backing and melody and harmony vocals added more depth to the songs on this album than the debut. In fact, like a cross between Yngwie Malmsteen and Dream Theater, Symphony X’s second album is the epitome of what progressive metal was all about in the 1990’s. It was, and is, excellent, but you could also tell that there was so much more potential waiting to be released, and that if they found a way to unlock that, then the band could be absolutely anything. Easy to say with hindsight, either in 2004 when I first heard these albums, knowing that “The Odyssey” and its excellence was built on the progression these albums made, but even more so in 2025 when you know what occurred after that time.
Listening to this album again over the past couple of weeks, I can say straight up that it has been enjoyable once again. Taken of itself, this is an excellent progressive metal album that came in a time when the music landscape was crying out for this in Europe, and no doubt dismissing it out of hand everywhere else in the world. Here on “The Damnation Game”, Symphony X combines great songs and riffs with the technical intertwining of guitars and keyboards and drums that ‘sometimes’ gets in the way of the passage of the song. The influence of both Yngwie Malmsteen and Dream Theater is obvious, especially in the early phases of the album. In its entirety, this is a terrific album. Taken piece by piece, song by song, it does have moments where you can lose interest. There are songs, such as “The Edge of Forever”, where it really does go on about two minutes too long. A little bit of verbal diarrhea to be sure. And yet, still great to listen to, without a doubt.
I don’t doubt that this is an album that many will listen to and not get or enjoy, because of its genre and its design. For me, I just love this band and everything about them, and as a result I still love this album today. My preference is for the albums in the second half of their career, from 2002’s “The Odyssey” onwards, but this album, with Russell Allen’s wonderful vocals making their introduction, this is still a fabulous listen.
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