What is Romantic Metal?

We knew when we were designing the musical style that there will be a misconception of what Romantic Metal means. Most people immediately will think of the term "Romantic" by today's definition - sappy love stories. Then they might think "this sounds like a cool idea, Romantic Metal," buy the CD, and wonder why it's not full of love ballads.

The term "Romantic" has been hijacked by pop culture decades ago, and there's nothing really we can do about that except to educate the masses what Romanticism really means. Romanticism was an artform popular in the 19th century. Wikipedia explains it better than we could.

Romanticism covered several types of art. When it came to music, the first true Romantic piece was Beethoven's 3rd. After Hadyn first heard the piece, he immediately knew his former student had surpassed him and remarked "music will never be the same." And it wasn't. The Romantic era of Classical music was hands down the best music written in human history, bar none. Greats like Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, Chopin, and Mendelssohn will never be surpassed.

Why Metal?

It's funny. We had this conversation when we first met. We're both such die-hard Metalheads that even when we try to compose in other styles, it still comes out Metal. We both have different Metal tastes and of course, there is a lot of overlap. But when it comes to Metal, we both appreciate from the very light to the extreme.

So Romantic Metal became a combination of two styles - 19th century Romanticism and late 20th, early 21st century Metal. Our music straddles the border of pop art and high art. Our orchestration comes straight out of the 19th century. Today's Symphonic Metal is almost always based either on Film Music or Baroque era Classical. With all due respect to our peers, we borrow from neither. (Roman did study the Baroque era, but only for historical purposes and also for his foundation in Counterpoint, for which the Baroque composers were masters at).

What does the future hold for Romantic Metal

It's hard to say. We often break the rules. Skitz likes Abstract Jazz, Dissonance, and Prog music and only towards the end of the Romantic era did composers start fooling around with Dissonance. Technically, that stuff is post-Romantic, but we're not very good at following rules. That said, the basis of the music is still Romanticism + Metal.