For some reason, Fates Warning is one of those bands that I've always wanted to like, but I never really got into 'em. I've checked out a number of their albums over the years (I still have "No Exit", I just never really listen to it), but nothing ever hooked me in. Well, just a few days ago, Metal Blade Records released this expanded reissue of "Parallels", the band's sixth full-length (originally released in 1991), and I decided I'd give 'em another shot. Maybe I'm a little more open-minded about certain facets of progressive metal these days, or maybe the relaxed nature of this material is a nice breather, I don't know. Whatever the case, I'm finally starting to get into this band!
They're pretty "different", too, forgoing many of the typical characteristics of this genre. For example, this material's definitely not as overtly technical and involved as the term "progressive metal" would suggest, nor does it boast the particularly energetic flourishes of power metal that often play a role for comparable artists. I wouldn't really call it "arty" either (and that's probably a good thing). The compositions aren't overly long, so the whole album clocks in at eight tracks in 45 minutes, etc. All that being said, it is pristinely recorded/mixed, which helps to highlight loads of sleek clean passages and generally cool riffs. There's a lot of really fluid instrumentation overall, and the songwriting is fairly memorable through just barely starting to scratch the surface of what could be considered occasional "catchiness". I know the band's approach has shifted in phases over the years, so this isn't representative of their entire body of work, but... I'm finally wanting to start exploring the rest of their back catalog to see how it all compares to this.
For longtime fans of the band, the second disc contains an eight-track live set recorded in 1992 with five demo recordings of songs from the album tacked on as an added bonus. To be honest with you, I've never been into live recordings, and since all of the demo songs appear on the album in re-recorded form, I haven't bothered to check out this portion of the material. On a similar note, I don't have a physical copy of the set, so I haven't seen the DVD, but it looks to include another full live set from 1992; two music videos; and a "making of" documentary that's said to contain current interviews with all of the band members, the album's producer, and Brian Slagel from Metal Blade. That's a hell of a lot of content, and unlike many "bonus" DVD's, it sounds like this one actually makes a difference!
As with the last few Metal Blade releases I've covered, they don't seem to be putting any complete tracks out there for download, so here's an excerpt to demonstrate a bit of what the album offers (you can check out more via the MySpace link above, of course):
Fates Warning "Eye to Eye" (excerpt)
This one's available digitally as well, but considering you can get the physical set with the bonus DVD for just a few bucks more, I can't really fathom why anyone would go the mp3 route here. Hell, you can get the CD's/DVD for just $13 at Amazon.com right now!? That's a bargain. There's a good chance I'll pick one up myself!
Comments
When I saw the cover I thought that this is some holy terror band. The music is quite cool, relaxed as you said so maybe I will listen the whole album…
3.19.2010 | By Carlos
I got the exact same feeling from this reissue of “Know of these guys a bit, but guess I should know of them more.” They’re playing here tonight, which I know is a once-in-a-life-time deal now, but I probably won’t go due to general fatigue.
3.19.2010 | By Invisible Oranges
This band somehow slipped past me back in the old days. I finally bought “Awaken The Guardian” a few years back and enjoy it regularly, but haven’t gotten around to buying any more of their work for some reason. This post might be the nudge I needed.
3.19.2010 | By Exodus Costello
Here’s a primer, it will help with a band like Fates Warning that has had at least 4 distinct periods.
Fates Warning were one of the first bands to play what we today consider progressive metal and with previous singer John Arch, they had a very distinctive voice in this genre. However they didn’t start as that at all, so this is why there’s a lot of confusion from people going to Fates thinking they’ll be listening to progressive metal and getting molten US power steel instead. The foundation of their first 3 records was Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, then the flourish was the distinctive US power metal ‘chunky’ and rhythmically austere style and a hint of nascent thrash (they were often confused for a thrash band circa 1986). The first three records with John Arch are an era in themselves. Chronologically they were
Night on Broken (1984)
Spectre Within (1985)
Awaken the Guardian (1986)
Night on Broken I do not recommend as it is made of what basically are demos into a debut album (Brian Slagel liked the demos enough to cut them as an album, the story goes). There are a couple of absolutely amazing tracks but a lot of unfinished stuff and perhaps some of the only filler FW did. The tone of the recording is pretty primitive too, pretty simple songs for the most part, they didn’t suggest what FW would be doing just a year later.
Spectre Within is a great place to start and one of the best they ever did. Long-winded compositions that alternate between explosive propulsion in the US power style and a more proud mid-tempo elegy. John Arch here ruminates on death and dying, it’s a pretty dark record but also a journey of self-discovery that seems to lead somewhere profound. At this stage in the game Fates Warning are in league with the thrash bands as to how punishing, rhythmic and precise they are but also more lyrical, introspective and pertinent than them. The lyrics of John Arch here and on the next album deserve interest as some of the best in metal, in my opinion.
Awaken the Guardian is a culmination of all that Spectre Within hinted both musically and lyrically. Whereas Spectre has stand-out tracks and a few less interesting ones, Awaken is more compact, all the songs stand on equal level. This is slightly more ‘progressive’ than Spectre and most critics think here is where we can officially start talking about progressive metal, personally I don’t see much difference between this and Spectre in the core of it and classify both as proto-progressive just to be neat. This is a less dark record, more hopeful and fantastical, in fact the most striking thing about it is how etherial and mystical what is an otherwise pretty punishing US power metal record can be.
Eh, it’s my favorite Heavy Metal record on the whole, I’m trying to not wax poetic about it but I feel like I’m disrespecting it so I’ll stop. If you make it to the past of FW, pay attention to both Spectre and Awaken because they have little to NO superficial charm/hooks, they deserve time and effort to get into.
John Arch is fired and No Exit is a mid-point between the early US power and the more introspective progressive metal that would later characterize FW. Still very dense and rhythmic, even more influenced by thrash metal, No Exit is a strange record. The production is hollow and tinny (the remaster is slightly better) and new singer Ray Alder is trying to cope with singing melody lines made for the higher register voice of Arch. The end result, perhaps because of the struggle too, ends up being manic and claustophobic a bit (fits the subject matter and record cover/name too). The end suite ‘Ivory Gate of Dreams’ is pretty awesome but I wouldn’t call it a progressive composition. It’s a heavy metal suite, just lots of riffs and sections that could be individual tracks, played in succession with some leitmotiff repetition.
The next record, first with Mark Zonder on the drums, starts their ‘modern progressive metal period’ properly, which culminates to Parallels, which you’ve now heard. Very dry, low-guitars mix (believe it or not, that was the sound of ‘progressive metal’ on the whole for a while. Before prog guitarists started playing Pantera/Black Album riffs in the verses to show how ‘hard’ they also were, of course a practice typified by Dream Theater) with the instruments far apart, like a more metallized Rush. Few power chords, lots of lead-in on the changes, very odd musical choices for harmonization. Adler still trying to sing mainly too high for him perhaps. The difference here is the ‘empty space’ in the compositions, with little or no propulsion. Progressive metal becomes here a genre in itself because it allows the metal form to touch on emotions that it previously could not: existentialism, ennui, misdirection, the human condition et al. That is why progressive metal was briefly a genre, not because of technical ability. There were technically amazing metal bands before prog and they exist now outside it still. In fact, I’d say Fates Warning or even Dream Theater are in the middle-tier as far as technical flash goes. Anyway, the focus on angst in metal sounds banal now after all the metalcore/emo and even atmospheric doom/death or depressive black metal outfits that followed but at the time I understand this was really revolutionary. The music is a reflection of these emotions. Sparse, occasionally bursts of complication, perhaps what they call ‘bi-polar’ in psychological terms. Up to THIS point, Fates Warning are a leading force in metal and progressive metal. This would change soon.
The next record is Parallels, the one you’re listening to. This is the most commercial, catchy and well, ‘concise’ Fates Warning got and it achieved moderate success. However they’re not leading anymore, this is an attempt to mimic perhaps Queensryche and their own brand of progressive metal/rock, perhaps a little bit of a Dream Theater influence is gaining as well. Songs are very straightforward verse-chorus affairs. The sound of Perfect Symmetry is maintained and refined upon. Fates Warning must have been really disappointed they didn’t make a million with this record while Queensryche did but in hindsight it makes sense because Jim Matheos’s (guitarist and lead composer) compositional idiom is a very depressive and austere, whereas Queensryche were playing mostly major melodies in an almost hair metal fashion in Operation: Mindcrime while Geoff Tate was singing about what he was singing on top.
Of course, the songs are great but the mimesis shows for those that are looking for it and once it does the record is compromised.
The next one was Inside Out which you’ll find consistently critics say is ‘like Parallels, with all its weaknesses amplified’. I won’t offer a different point of view, it’s exactly like that. Only end song ‘Monument’ is a real standout. The band imploded after this release due to I guess, lack of success.
Jim Matheos pulled together a reconfigured line-up a while after and put out ‘A Pleasant Shade of Gray’ an extended suite-form, perhaps. It’s a very significant record and a far cry from the commercialized attempts of Parallels/Inside Out. Even darker and more confined than Perfect Symmetry, very personal and ultimately rewarding to listen to attentively. At this point Fates Warning become an ‘outside force’ to how progressive metal is being shaped. Nobody has been really copying this style whereas there were at the time legions of Dream Theater clones. Matheos is off doing his own thing and he’s all the better for it. If you check interviews, he is perpetually disappointed by the lack of monetary success his hard-working band has achieved, but at least musically here a degree of self-confidence is evident, in that what they’re playing means much to them, enough to not compromise in another attempt to be ‘like Dream Theater’.
Next record “Disconnected” is the little brother of “A Pleasant Shade of Grey”. They’re equally good in my opinion, both extremely recommended. Here Matheos picks up even more ‘modern metal’ influence but it doesn’t really spoil things because Fates Warning have come so strange, so suis generis, that they’re their own little world, couldn’t accuse them of trying to sound like anyone else anymore.
Their final record so far, “FWX” however, is very tired and really of little interest. I do not suggest you listen to it soon at least.
Tangential projects of interest are OSI, with Kevin Moore of Chroma Key and ex-Dream Theater, whose first record is extremely good, and John Arch - A Twist of Fate, which is a recent result of the coming together of Jim Matheos and ex-Fates singer John Arch (also Portnoy from Theater drums). The music on it is a little trite in places (predictably the places it sounds most like Dream Theater) but Arch has lost none of his charisma (and if anything his singing is even better) so it’s very worthwhile.
I hope this helps you appreciate Fates Warning for what they were at each period and not what they could not have been. Good sailing.
3.21.2010 | By Helm
Holy crap! LONGEST. COMMENT. EVER. And I REALLY appreciate it! I will definitely keep these points in mind as I start to explore the band’s other work. Thanks so much for taking the time to go into all of this detail!
3.21.2010 | By Andrew Aversionline
No worries, I’ve picked up a lot of knowledge that’s inconsequential most of the time so when I get the chance to help with it, I feel better about myself too.
A final note about John Arch versus Ray Alder periods of the band that you - or anyone else planning to take the plunge - should keep in mind. There is an inter-band confusion that colors the ‘shift’ from ‘Awaken the Guardian’ to ‘No Exit’. Original singer John Arch used a mythological, fantastical paradigm for his lyrics and he was very consistent about it. This leads many fans and, evidently, Jim Matheos himself to think that early Fates Warning are a ‘fantasy metal band’. Indeed there are mentions of giants, kings and queens, merlin the wizard, arcana and other such semiotics on ‘Spectre Within’ and ‘Awaken the Guardian’. Jim Matheos circa 1897 comes to the resolution that that stuff is juvenile, and wants his band to shift to a more human, personal, contemporary aesthetic not only because he wants to make it big but because he just wants to distance himself from what he increasingly considers an escapist and insincere type of music (the aforementioned fantasy heavy metal). Hence their existential-progresive metal shift with all the ‘nothing left to say’ lyrics.
The misconception is, and I urge you to keep this in mind if you ever peruse the earlier stuff, in thinking that the John Arch lyrics were really about abject fantasy. They were not. EVERY song in those two albums has many, very real life, very important and universal parallels in human experience. I will not ‘spoil’ any songs for you by telling you what they mean but they’re effective allegories. Taking the language and the vivid imagination of the child and turning them to address the enduring existential issues of man: this is what mythology does, and this is what John Arch, a troubled young man from Conneticut, set out to do in the Heavy Metal form. He was successful and this is why early Fates is beyond reproach: the achieved things in the medium that Iron Maiden or Judas Priest very rarely, if ever even *considered possible*. In a way, John Arch, for those that were paying attention was one of the most courageous visionaries in the history of HM. And what he got for it is his close friend and bandmate telling him that what he’s doing in the band is juvenile.
So if you ever listen to the early stuff, let it travel with you away, but also, read between the lines. When some random dude on the internet is willing to tell you that Fates Warning taught him, amongst other things, the meaning of responsibility and sacrifice, something’s probably going on.
3.21.2010 | By Helm
Thanks for another super insightful comment! I feel like a true simpleton reading all of this intelligent analysis, ha, ha! I’ll definitely check out some of the John Arch work, this last comment makes me feel as though I’d be missing out if I didn’t.
3.22.2010 | By Andrew Aversionline
Parallels is great!
awesome and detailed comment above. very well done. Guardian is best of early stuff for sure and like he said one of the best of all time. John Arch was great.
3.25.2010 | By Matt
I actually like a few songs from Parallels - Eleventh Hour and the start of Eye to Eye. Leave the Past Behind was a favorite for a 6 years before I really started getting into them. The Arch stuff and No Exit/Perfect Symmetry. After that I just think there was a big drop off in creativity.
A lot of fans of the latter era don’t really like Arch and there was recent news of the Arch/Matheos collaobration album coming out soon. I’m actually quite excieted for it but these fans would rather have a proper follow up to FWX after 7 years of waiting. They have Redemption since he’s all over that band.
3.16.2011 | By pre position