Abstract
I illustrate how Symphony X’s concept album retells Milton’s Paradise Lost and complicates the narrative through its use of voice and creative extrapolation, resulting in an intertextual relationship through which the album and epic influence one another’s readings, particularly with regard to gender and the biblical binary of good/evil. One of the difficulties in interpreting the album is that singer Russell Allen shifts his tone of voice to suit the mood of the song, not to denote a change in speaker. Thus, key passages that blend characters’ voices on the album further emphasize the deconstruction of good and evil introduced through the extrapolated narrative and challenge the traditional gender roles presented in the source text. I conclude that within Symphony X’s writing and performances of Paradise Lost, the combination of performative genders challenges the politics of both the source text and the album’s cultural context, i.e. that of heavy metal.
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