Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Fates Warning
Label: Inside Out Records
Release: 2016
Running time: 52:17
Rating: 4.5/5
Fates Warning are today considered one of the most respected names in progressive metal. The band, active without a break since 1982, has served up the follow-up to »Darkness in the Different Light« three years after that one came out. It’s their 12th studio album overall, titled »Theories of Flight«.
The previous record already made it clear why a solid nine years had to pass between it and its predecessor »FWX » (2004). With »Darkness in the Different Light«, which is without a doubt an excellent album, Fates Warning went back to the days of »No Exit«,« Parallels«, Perfect Simmetry«, both sonically and in the songwriting. They haven’t hit this hard and heavy in the decibel department since »Inside Out«. There are no sonic experiments with electronic sounds or similar attempts at trendy »modernizing« of the sound on the new album.»Theories of Flight« deepens the musical direction of its predecessor, nurtures it and, most importantly, builds on it. The new lineup (even though Frank Aresti officially left the band before the album came out) has found its songwriting calibration and an excellent artistic sense for placing and picking up ideas,
What does that mean? That guitarist Jim Matheos, the only original (and founding) member of today’s Fates Warning lineup, as well as its boss and mastermind, hasn’t been this inspired as a songwriter, this creatively »charged up«, in a long time, until these last few years. The excellent »Darkness in the Different Light«, for all its obvious strengths, still held back a few small reserves, which »Theories of Flight« taps into, filling the artistic gaps with full-blooded force. Especially when it comes to an even more effective musical payoff within the compositions themselves, and the resulting creation of even more gripping moods and atmospheres that really hit home.
Ray Alder sings superbly, like in the best of times, and you can feel his voice is working at top level again, which the previous album had already hinted at. But Alder’s vocals are used even more musically than on the predecessor. The new album trades brilliantly in complexity and melodic catchiness, walking with incredible skill along the dividing line right between the two. Like very few Fates Warning albums in their career. It’s hard to believe a band can even pull this off on its twelfth studio album, but here we are! That means it’s stuffed with a series of memorable choruses which, with their singability and fat production and a strong dose of darkness, often steal the spotlight on the record. Fates Warning are crafty masters of building up moods that slowly creep toward a climax, usually right in those songful chorus melodies. Two songs run over ten minutes, and these two mini epic suites are masterpieces of marrying complexity with melodic accessibility. In that manner they’re basically real little textbooks. Ray Alder contributed deeply personal, confessional lyrics to the songs, which he delivers with remarkably lived-in feeling and, where it’s called for, with a subtle softness in his vocal approach.
Over the years Fates Warning have become incredibly refined songwriters who know when to take their foot off the gas of (already proverbial) complexity (the thing that gives the band its eternal stamp as progressive icons) and completely subordinate it to building gripping atmospheres, which often outweigh every other musical element of the band’s artistic identity . A phenomenal example of this is the closing stretch of the album with the superb mini epic suite The Ghost of Home, the longest song on the record, adorned with unannounced (unexpected) switches between the creation of many different moods. The album gains dramatic momentum right in its final part, and the brilliant closing instrumental (the title track) only reinforces that. Maybe on this track one might drool a little at the thought of what the versatile Mark Zonder could have brought on drums, though it’s clear that the »wild« Bobby Jarzombek, especially given the rise in metallic ferocity and riff-heavy bite in the new compositions, is just the right solution for the new Fates Warning.
»Theories of Flight« is the album that caught Fates Warning’s fans off guard. Not because the band couldn’t pull it off, but because nobody really expected an artistic masterpiece like this after 34 long years of holding their ground on the scene. Delivering the best you’re capable of and know how to do to your fans even in the fourth decade of your career is (especially compared with the artistic burnout of many of the band’s contemporaries) deserving of all respect. »Theories of Flight« is an outstanding album, if not one of the best albums of the year, not just in the progressive metal subgenre but across the whole metal genre and, last but not least, rock’n’roll. It will thrill demanding listeners who don’t know the band yet as well as longtime followers, who got with it exactly what they were looking for from Fates Warning.
Fates Warning – “From the Rooftops” (lyric video):
Lineup
Ray Alder – vocals
Jim Matheos – guitar
Joey Vera – bass
Bobby Jarzombek – drums
GUEST MUSICIANS
Frank Aresti – guitar solos on “From The Rooftops” and “White Flag”
Mike Abdow – guitar solo on “White Flag”
Production
Fates Warning
Track list
1. From the Rooftops (6:52)
2. Seven Stars (5:33)
3. SOS (4:34)
4. The Light and Shade of Things (10:14)
5. White Flag (5:20)
6. Like Stars Our Eyes Have Seen (5:13)
7. The Ghosts of Home (10:31)
8. Theories of Flight (4:00)
