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When Ray Alder joined their ranks, they were fascinated with the more aggressive prog-thrash ways of expression, a delivery they could have nailed in a way no worse than Toxik and Realm if they had voted to produce a faithful sequel to “No Exit”.

#Fates warning parallels download how to

In retrospect, it’s clear that the band weren’t very certain how to handle the very volatile, mouldable late-80’s music environment. Quite a few years later, now that I’m well familiar with the band’s entire catalogue, I’m trying to see if this album could get any more points significance-wise… it doesn’t get that many. And it seems as though the band members themselves are not very enthusiastic about said flights, at this stage at least this is a quiet homogenous effort that follows its own introspective mind, the only truly questionable presence here being the closing ballad “The Road Goes on Forever”: the guys didn’t have to finalize things in such a deliberately downbeat manner provided that the material before it was following a very similar minimalistic path. The thing is that whatever the guys try they always depart from this peaceful, pleasantly pensive ground which simply doesn’t allow more dynamic flights of the imagination. It’s more vocal-driven as well this new delivery, with memorable choruses provided all around, with some of the songs (“Eye to Eye”) having this undeniable hit potential, whereas others (“The Eleventh Hour”) try to capture some of the more contrived, progressive magic from earlier recordings. The aggression has been completely taken away from the riffage, and all the compositions have this ethereal, even plain melancholic if you like, quality, flowing into each other without much drama stirred. The new vocalist has a more composed, less adventurous approach to singing, but is emotional and proficient enough to carry this new musical trajectory which is within the progressive metal/rock realms, soulful totally accessible stuff that sounds like it’s a different band that has concocted it. So it turned out that John Arch was gone at some stage, and that the absorbing entangled vistas had most likely gone with him. The future brought the album reviewed here at my threshold a few years later, and I was quite surprised, not unpleasantly mind you, at the tangible metamorphosis witnessed. One thing was certain, these lads were decidedly the most elaborate music providers of the four, and fully absorbing their multi-layered art would require multiple concentrated listens… definitely an option for the future, but not a very urgent issue at that moment in time. I got acquainted with the band through “Awaken the Guardian” in the late-80’s, but the complex multi-textured musicianship and John Arch’s epic high-strung vocals failed to win me whole-heartedly for their cause. sorry, faithful follower of their steady, also not very fluctuating march. Strangely enough, the band under scrutiny here have never been worshipped with pure devotion in my homeland, at least in my circle, and all these years I’ve barely known one guy who is a fate.

I knew, and still do, quite a few fans who were ready to follow Savatage and Queensryche all the way to the grave and beyond, not to mention the multitudes who readily fell for Crimson Glory’s mystical, mask-wearing tactics. For reasons that I can’t really explain, this outfit remained the least appreciated one from the Big Four of US progressive metal in Bulgaria.