Progressive metal veterans Symphony X have been working on their long-awaited new album for years, with guitarist and primary songwriter Michael Romeo discussing the slow but steady progress in a recent interview with Brazil's 92.5 Kiss FM.

The band has faced numerous challenges since the early days, when album royalties allowed them to focus solely on writing and recording.

However, repeated tour cycles have interrupted their workflow, leaving Romeo with a massive backlog of unfinished ideas.

"I come home, more ideas," he explained.

"I didn't finish the ones from last time, so now repeat that like 20 times." Romeo hopes the band can finally lock in a recording schedule this year: "The schedule we're trying to get on is by the end of this year, let's have this thing recorded." Frontman Russell Allen echoed his sentiment in a recent interview with Uruguay's The Dark Melody, revealing that Romeo has already sent him roughly 10 hours of material for what will likely be a 55-minute album.

While the gap between albums has stretched to more than a decade, Allen insists the band prioritizes quality over speed: "It becomes a monumental task just to weed through all the stuff," he said.

"But he's honed a lot of it in, so we're getting close." The massive backlog of material could potentially shorten the wait for the next record after this one.