We almost called our style of music "Metal Romanticism", but it just didn't have that good of a ring

If you know us, you know we call our music Romantic Metal. But we almost called it "Metal Romanticism" because technically, it's more correct. However, it sounds kind of lame.

We knew that most people don't know what Romanticism is. When the average person sees "Romantic Metal," they probably think we write nothing but love songs and then they'd think "what's the difference between Romantic Metal and Love Metal?" Well, as much as we love H.I.M, for one, we don't sound like them. For another, no, Romanticism is an art movement that developed in the late 1700s. The music form of Romanticism came later, after Beethoven came out with his Third Symphony which was the world's first true Romantic piece.

The word "romance" originated from Romanticism, but it's only one part of Romanticism. Romanticism was sort of a reaction against the Age of Reason going too far where we tried to rationalize everything to the point that we forgot how to be human. Romanticism was also a reaction to the horrors of the Industrial Revolution, where humans would literally be ground up in the machines they created.

The Romantics liked a simpler life and (falsely) glorified the Medieval period. They also saw grandeur in nature, which is a good thing; something the Age of Reason folks forgot to appreciate. They also loved writing about horror and superstition. The last part sound familiar? Several of the descriptors of Romanticism coincide with the descriptors for Heavy Metal music. So a lot of Metalheads didn't realize there already is overlap between Metal and Romanticism.

We take it a step further. We love the old Romantic authors, as do many Metal bands. The step further we take it is we study the Romantic musical greats - Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Wagner, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Dvorak, etc. We have their scores (they're all public domain) and study them thoroughly. Roman, the orchestrator, is an actual Classical composer too.

So if you like both Metal and Romantic era Classical, you may just love us. We're a combination of both. We strongly believe that if you took the orchestrations out, the music should still stand on its own. However, if you took the Metal instruments and the vocals out, the orchestrations should also stand out on their own. We got two things going on at the same time and found a way to make it work.

But "Metal Romanticism," despite being technically correct, just sounds lame. So we went with "Romantic Metal" instead, even though there will be a lot of people misinterpreting it as a collection of Heavy Metal love songs. Romantic Metal has a great ring to it. It just needs explanation to avoid the confusion.

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