Emanuel Arzumanyan

A composer, guitarist, bassist, producer, and audio engineer, he transforms history, mythology, and human struggle into immersive musical worlds. At the centre of his work is symphonic progressive death metal a language through which orchestral grandeur, extreme-metal intensity, progressive composition, expressive musicianship, and cinematic storytelling become part of a single vision.

His music is built around contrast: beauty and brutality, ancient history and modern production, intricate composition and raw emotion. Rather than using orchestration as decoration, Emanuel treats the orchestra, metal band, keyboards, soloists, and voices as characters within a larger narrative. Every arrangement is designed to serve the story.

That relationship between sound and imagination began in childhood.

Emanuel grew up listening to the stories of his father, a guitarist who had once played in a band. Through him, he discovered artists such as Uriah Heep, Deep Purple, Boston, Pink Floyd, and The Beatles. But the defining moment came when his father introduced him to the electric guitar and showed him his first chords and scales. The instrument opened a world that would shape the direction of his life.

He began studying piano at the age of seven before turning his attention to guitar. By fourteen, he was studying classical guitar privately, and at fifteen he entered Yerevan State Musical College, named after Armenian composer and pianist Arno Babajanyan.

His classical education established the musical foundations that remain central to his work: harmony, counterpoint, structure, interpretation, and the ability to create emotional movement through composition. The works of J.S. Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Antonio Vivaldi, Aram Khachaturian, Gustav Holst, Niccolò Paganini, Camille Saint-Saëns, and Erik Satie expanded his understanding of musical architecture and narrative.

At the same time, metal revealed another form of expression.

Dream Theater, Symphony X, Pantera, Metallica, Megadeth, Black Sabbath, Nightwish, Epica, Wintersun, and Behemoth introduced Emanuel to progressive structures, rhythmic aggression, atmosphere, and the physical power of amplified sound. Guitarists including Jason Becker, Dimebag Darrell, John Petrucci, Marty Friedman, and Zakk Wylde inspired his development as both a player and composer.

Devin Townsend became another important influence not only through his extraordinary vocal range, but through his compositions, orchestrations, layered production, and ability to unite heaviness, vulnerability, atmosphere, and scale. Townsend’s work reinforced Emanuel’s belief that vocals, instrumentation, orchestration, and production should not exist as separate elements; they should form one complete emotional world.

At twenty-one, Emanuel moved to Hamburg, Germany, where his jazz studies deepened his understanding of harmony, rhythm, improvisation, and musical interaction. Classical discipline, metal intensity, jazz harmony, and cinematic production gradually converged into the musical identity he continues to develop today.

In 2019, Emanuel founded the international progressive symphonic metal project Synteresis with Rohan Sharma, Thibault Faijan, Fernando Furones, and Federico Persano.

The band’s first single, “Burst of the Light,” became the earliest full expression of his orchestral-metal vision. Recorded with the Budapest Art Orchestra, the composition united progressive metal with the depth and scale of a live symphonic ensemble. Bringing the international band together in Hamburg to film its first music video also demonstrated Emanuel’s ability to transform an ambitious composition into a complete audiovisual production.

Although Synteresis was ultimately short-lived, its conclusion became the beginning of Emanuel’s solo career.

That new chapter opened with “The Rise After the Fall,” an expansive progressive symphonic metal composition centred on perseverance, transformation, and renewal. Created with Fernando Furones and Thibault Faijan, the piece featured acclaimed guitarist Jeff Loomis as a guest soloist an important artistic and personal milestone.

Emanuel pushed his historical and conceptual storytelling further with the EP Lamentation of Lost Civilizations.

Inspired by the destruction of Pompeii, Atlantis, Iram of the Pillars, and Sodom and Gomorrah, the project explored the fragile boundary between human greatness and disappearance. Across “Sleeping Giant,” “Ravenous Sea,” “Atlantis of the Sands,” and “Destruction of Sodom & Gomorrah,” Emanuel combined progressive death metal, symphonic arrangements, cinematic keyboards, melodic solos, growled vocals, and contrasting clean voices.

Created over more than two years, the EP brought together musicians from several countries, including Francesco Antonelli, Carlos Damiano, Chris Bohm, Richard Grey, Christopher Bone, and Mauro Elias. The long production process tested Emanuel’s confidence and perseverance, but its completion established the creative foundation of his solo identity: ambitious music shaped by history, tragedy, and imagination.

His more recent work has continued to expand that identity.

“Strings of Steel and Silk” reimagined a violin concerto by Johann Sebastian Bach as a symphonic metal production. Emanuel rearranged the classical composition and collaborated with violinist Arman Simonyan, drummer Thibault Faijan, and orchestrator Paul Cecchetti. Its cinematic music video was filmed at the Castle of Vêves in Belgium, bringing the project’s classical heritage and modern heaviness into a historic visual setting.

The project reflects a defining belief within Emanuel’s work: the past should not be preserved as something untouchable. It can be reinterpreted, intensified, and introduced to a new audience without losing its original emotional power.

While symphonic progressive death metal remains his primary artistic direction, Emanuel also explores hip-hop production as a side project and a parallel form of storytelling. Drawing on his experience as a composer, musician, and audio engineer, he approaches these productions with an emphasis on rhythm, atmosphere, and the connection between music and words.

His collaborations with Mr. Maph include “Gotta Get Mine” and “Fakers,” bringing together Emanuel’s music, production, mixing, and mastering with Mr. Maph’s lyrics and vocal delivery. These releases reveal a different side of his creative process, giving him space to explore arrangements that support the voice and strengthen the story within each song.

Their collaboration continues with “Bleeding Gold,” Emanuel’s latest hip-hop track, which combines cinematic production with lyrics centred on struggle, identity, honesty, and perseverance. Together, these projects form a distinct part of his musical journey, connected to the same emotional depth and human themes that shape his metal compositions.Emanuel’s artistic development is inseparable from his work in audio production.
 

His formal journey into audio engineering began at HOFA-College, where he studied the foundations of recording, acoustics, production, mixing, and mastering. This training allowed him to unite his compositional instincts with the technical knowledge needed to control the complete journey of a recording from its earliest arrangement to its final master.

He later founded Sonic Vision Audio Production, developing a professional studio centred on detailed, emotionally conscious production. Through continued investment in high-end equipment and his own technical education, Emanuel has built an environment for producing his music and helping other artists realise their creative intentions.

His approach to engineering is shaped by his experience as a composer and multi-instrumentalist. He does not view mixing as a process of making every element polished in isolation. He sees it as part of the arrangement a way of controlling movement, impact, atmosphere, space, and emotional focus.

His professional development has also included participation in Berlin Metalcon masterclasses, where he met and learned from leading metal producers and engineers including Jens Bogren, Joost van den Broek, Kristian Kohle, and Lasse Lammert.

The experience strengthened his understanding of critical listening, modern metal production, professional workflow, and the level of decision-making required in internationally competitive productions. Just as importantly, it connected him with a wider community of producers and engineers and reinforced his ambition for Sonic Vision.

Today, Emanuel continues to develop every part of his creative language. He performs guitar and bass, composes and arranges his music, expands his orchestral writing, records and produces his projects, and advances his mixing and mastering abilities.

Emanuel Arzumanyan’s career is not defined by a single instrument, genre, or discipline. It is defined by the pursuit of a complete artistic vision.

From classical study and progressive metal to orchestral recording, hip-hop production, live performance, and professional audio engineering, every stage of his journey has expanded the world he is building.

His music looks into the past, but it is not trapped there. Ancient cities, lost cultures, classical compositions, and human stories become material for something new music that is technically ambitious, emotionally direct, and cinematic in scale.

For Emanuel, every composition is a world waiting to be entered.

And that world is still expanding.