{"id":17344,"date":"2017-11-03T01:00:39","date_gmt":"2017-11-03T05:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southeastofheaven.com\/?p=17344"},"modified":"2022-01-06T19:49:22","modified_gmt":"2022-01-07T00:49:22","slug":"album-review-sons-of-apollo-psychotic-symphony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/?p=17344","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Sons of Apollo &#8211; Psychotic Symphony"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Sons of Apollo &#8211; Psychotic Symphony<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong> Release Date<\/strong>: October 20, 2017<br \/>\n<strong>Label<\/strong>: Inside Out Music<\/p>\n<p>What do you get when you take Jeff Scott Soto, Bumblefoot, Billy Sheehan, Derek Sherinian, and Mike Portnoy, put them in a studio together, and let them create something?\u00a0 You get a lifeless band called Sons of Apollo and a faceless, forgettable, dull, and eye rolling album called Psychotic Symphony.\u00a0 The 11 minute opening opus \u201cGod of the Sun\u201d kicked things off and regardless of how open minded I tried to be going into this album, the over indulgence of this song had me rolling my eyes and assuming that I knew what lied ahead.<\/p>\n<p>Well, by the time the fourth song \u201cLabyrinth\u201d kicked on, I literally could feel the anxiety settling in.\u00a0 This album was literally so bad that it was making me anxious.\u00a0 I know that prog metal is all about playing all the notes but at the same time, if done well, the music can be truly exceptional.\u00a0 Blind Guardian has proven this as has Portnoy\u2019s former band, Dream Theater.\u00a0 Where Sons of Apollo fails is that it\u2019s almost as if they, as a band, are relying on the combined egos of musicians who pretty much fail to see that even in the creating of a new band, the egos are much more prevalent than quality songwriting.\u00a0 The lyrics are flat out ridiculous: \u201cSo get out of my way, I&#8217;m going out on my own\u2026&#8221;\u00a0 Really?<\/p>\n<p><iframe width=\"750\" height=\"422\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/TLVWkqnN3Ck?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" gesture=\"media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s kind of funny because the strongest presence of this band is hands down vocalist Jeff Scott Soto.\u00a0 To this day he has without a doubt one of my all time favorite metal voices but much like with Ripper Owens, if you aren\u2019t singing anything worth listening to, the quality of your instrument is pretty much null and void.\u00a0 I don\u2019t care how great a singer you are, if you\u2019re singing over indulgent wanky prog shit, than, that\u2019s what you are and nothing more.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s really a bummer because I love nothing more than to be proven wrong.\u00a0 In many cases, I have been very pleasantly proven wrong but with Sons of Apollo, they just confirmed assumptions and pretty much met my expectations which reside on the lowest rung possible.\u00a0 In a recent interview, keyboardist (and Dream Theater member kicked out by Portnoy) Derek Sherinian said that He and Portnoy were, \u201ctaking back the <em>prog<\/em> metal <em>crown.\u201d\u00a0 <\/em>Well, if that\u2019s the case they must still be looking for it.\u00a0 Mike Portnoy also replied to a negative review by saying not everything can be The Estonishing (last Dream Theater album).\u00a0 You are so correct, Mikeyboy but honesty, Psychotic Symphony made The Estonishing sound like a lost King Crimson masterpiece.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sons of Apollo &#8211; Psychotic Symphony Release Date: October 20, 2017 Label: Inside Out Music What do you get when you take Jeff Scott Soto, Bumblefoot, Billy Sheehan, Derek Sherinian, and Mike Portnoy, put them in a studio together, and let them create something?\u00a0 You get a lifeless band called Sons of Apollo and a faceless, forgettable, dull, and eye rolling album called Psychotic Symphony.\u00a0 The 11 minute opening opus \u201cGod of the Sun\u201d kicked things off and regardless of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,277],"tags":[1874,1876,1875,1877,1322,1873],"class_list":["post-17344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-reviews","category-music-news","tag-billy-sheehan","tag-bumblefoot","tag-derek-sherinian","tag-jeff-scott-soto","tag-mike-portnoy","tag-sons-of-apollo"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17344"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19650,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17344\/revisions\/19650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}