Some of the best Fates Warning material came after Arch in my opinion. And as for Alder not having an edge to his voice, guys Arch didn't have an edge either. They are both very clean melodic metal singers but it works perfectly for the music and I personally have a preference for that kind of style anyways.

I know we've discussed this before Oblarg, but anyways. While i absolutely adore Parallels, i just really have a difficult time trying to get into APSOG. It just....doesn't seem to have the same magic. While a lot of people find Parallels to be boring, 90s sounding prog rock, i think it's great. There is a lot of feeling to the songs and some very deep, reflective lyrics, but APSOG seems to lack the flow and poignant qualities that Parallels has. I will revisit it soon and hope it sounds better next time round.

I felt the exact same way about APSoG for about the first ten times that I heard it. Trust me, when it clicks, you'll know. Don't listen to it expecting some rocking, catchy tracks - it's all about the atmosphere, how all the little nuances add up to really bring the theme to life. If there's any advice I can give, it's that you should pay close attention to the way the various themes are introduced and repeated, because there's a lot of significance there for the album's concept.

Arch might not have an edge to his voice, but he more than makes up for it with his both ethereal and original sound, coupled with his famous intricate vocal melodies. Alder just sounds generic to me. Nothing against the people who like him or his stuff with FW, but personally? I'll stay with Arch for the moment, thanks. Maybe some day the Alder material will click with me (just like the Arch stuff did), but that's not gonna happen any time soon.

We've had this discussion too many times, haha.

I think it's just safe to say, Alder alone makes post Arch-FW very hard to approach for a lot of people. Myself included. I know I need to give up on bashing him when I saw him live with Redemption (oh... ehehe), but yeah. And I've never been one that cares too much for proficiency in vocalists, like a lot of the dirty inconsistent thrash singers out there, or people like Andy Michaud from early Liege Lord, but yeah. Something about Alder ...

But hey, I'd take Alder over say, Kiske anyday. Holy balls Kiske is lifeless!

First time I see someone dissing Kiske. I can see why, but I personally consider him a flawless singer.

Can't stand Kiske, he sounds bored. A metal singer should never sound bored.

Isn't perspective a beautiful and strange thing?

I find that Kiske actually sounds a lot better these days (in Avantasia) than in the Helloween days. His performance on the song Helloween is damn cool though.

I respectfully disagree. I thought he did a great job on "Saints in Hell" and was even more aggressive than Halford on that track.

I've been listening to a lot of Vicious Rumors lately, and I gotta say the inclusion of Vinnie Moore on the debut really makes it stand out. He's just awesome in general, but he fits that style much better than he seems to think these days. I wish he'd stop doing all the cheesy blues rock stuff and go back to some metal!

Yeah, I think his solo stuff is excellent up to "The Maze"... but I still think if I can consider it, I'd say his work on VR's debut is still the best.

I agree that Kiske sounds very boring. There were vocalists in the 80's with a similiar vocal style who'd easily out do him (See John Arch, Geoff Tate and yes, even Ray Alder)

And since there's a FW talk around anyway, does anyone else thinks No Exit could have been much better if wasn't for the production and Ray's at the time young voice? The guy already got a better tone on Perfect Symmetry but on the former album his voice sounded a bit immature. Almost like he's hitting high notes for the sake of high notes just because he could. Mweh.

Yeah, I thought I used to like "No Exit", but after listening to it again a few times last year I could barely finish it. Has a good few tracks. I think even beyond Alder, the material just isn't that great.

No Exit feels like a "leftovers" album, like they had some good stuff from the Arch days and then some boring prog crap. After that, who cares? I guess if you really, really like Queensryche's 'Jet City Woman' you could give it a go... but the whole "Hey, we're singing about relationship issues... the parallel lines is a metaphor for relationship issues... I don't like fantasy any more!" stuff is lame, mainstream pandering in which FW show what nice, well-adjusted wimps they are.

Uh, Point of View isn't about relationships. Really, according to Matheos, the only song on Parallels about relationships is We Only Say Goodbye, which doesn't try to be metaphorically fancy at all. Most of their mid-period stuff is more about existential angst than anything else, and Matheos is a pretty good lyricist. Seriously:

"Have you stood at the edge of the world
Where the sea and sky collide?
Looked out to a distant horizon
And dreamed of drifting away?

Have you stood beneath a troubled sky
And watched the dark clouds gathering?
Closed your eyes to the threatening tide
And woke to another day?"

No, it's not John Arch's metaphor-packed fantastic excursions, but it's solid, emotive stuff. It's certainly not just generic whining about relationships.

Parallels could have been a decent record if it wasn't for the WE HAVE TO APPEAL TO THE MAINSTREAM, WRITE CATCHY SHIT NOW! kind of songwriting. There's some fun songs on the record such as ''Point of View'' or ''Don't Follow Me'' but most songs really fail to deliver. ''The Eleventh Hour'' for example, starts great with a smooth intro before it turns heavier. Then eventually you get the idea the members of Fates Warning almost forgot to add some catchiness to it so they come up with this dumb ohoo nothing's easy anymore line which completely ruins it. Bah.

And I like Perfect Symmetry. It's probably my favourite of the Ray Alder era. Not a single bad song on it to be found. ''Part of the Machine'', ''Through Different Eyes'' and ''Nothing Left to Say'' are some of FW's best.

I'd say Parallels is at its best in the more atmospheric tracks, and really they're not that commercial. Seriously, listen to Leave the Past Behind or The Road Goes On Forever - that stuff isn't really commercialized at all, it's really subdued, subtle stuff with brilliant layering of sounds and good songwriting.

Why did Arch leave anyways back then?

I think it had something to do with him being much older than the rest of the band.

He indeed was quite older. I recall reading that Matheos fired him through a phone call. Why I can't remember, cause according to Arch himself combining music with a side job was no problem for him. His boss would even give him days off he needed to tour with the band. How cool is that?

From what I recall reading in an interview, Matheos and the rest of the crew where quite the dicks when it came to firing Arch.

If this is indeed so, it seems kind of weird that they reunited for Arch/Mateos (a project which I still think is merely ok)

Not all people are rancorous assholes, you know?

Maybe so, but if somebody was a huge dick and fired me from a band, I wouldn't jump at the opportunity to get back into a band with that person. Besides, Arch could have done pretty much anything and fans would have lapped it up.

I just think they got over it like grown men should do, pressumably including a heartfelt apology from Matheos and a bunch of hugs and manly tears.

But seriously, I believe they just decided it was time to give the fans what they wanted for years.

Essentially, what happened is this:

Following Guardian, Fates Warning felt that making it as a reasonably successful band was a real possibility, and decided to really try to be commercially successful. Unfortunately, John Arch had both a job and responsibilities to other people and couldn't simply quit work and devote his life to touring. The other members felt this was a liability, and told Arch to either quit his job or that they'd find another vocalist - this wasn't just Matheos' doing. Obviously, Arch chose the latter, and that's that.

Now, from what I gather Matheos and Arch got over the hard feelings later and became friends again - I don't think there was ever really much open animosity between then, so the reunion (both for the Twist of Fate EP and Sympathetic Resonance) isn't that hard to fathom. I'd speculate that, between the recent direction of Ray Alder's vocals and how he's seemingly blowing off Fates Warning for Redemption (seems like that was the main reason Matheos asked Arch to do the recent material) and the fact that Fates never really did blow up commercially the way they had hoped (DiBase mentions in several interviews how disappointing this was for the band, and how they had been counting on it), Matheos realizes booting Arch was a dumb thing to do. I really wouldn't be surprised if we see more Arch/Matheos in the future.

Would be seeing Arch actually return to Fates Warning too much of a fantasy?

In name, yes, because I don't think Matheos is going to alienate Alder in that way (though in some recent interviews you can tell that the situation is already a bit awkward). But really, that's essentially what Arch/Matheos is, both musicians have admitted as much. And while Alder has wrecked his upper register with smoking, Arch still sounds as good as ever, so I'd wager that we'll likely see a lot more material out of the latter so long as he's up to it.

That's more than enough for me, then. Out boring Alder, in awesome Arch!

I've been playing Riot's Immortal Soul too much lately since I've picked it up.

Recommend me power metal / speed metal that's obviously fast, has soaring vocals in the vein of this release. Thanks.

If you haven't heard Scanner's Hypertrace and Terminal Earth, those are obviously a great place to start.

I've heard all Scanner's releases, good stuff.
I'm actually looking for something more modern. I prefer Immortal Soul over Thundersteel and that's saying a lot.

Eh, I'm not sure how generic Alder is, especially the Alder of APSoG and later albums. Lots of prog bands had vocalists who tried to copy him to some degree, mainly his vocals on 'Parallels' or PS, but not many vocalists actually seemed to do so very well (if they did, I'd probably have found more of them when looking). One of the only vocalists who does often seem close to later Alder is Jakko Jakszyk of the Jakszyk, Fripp and Collins King Crimson projeKct, and he's pretty great in his own right. I mean, to be fair, when I had first listened to Alder, I did think, 'So this is where the stereotypical prog metal vocalist comes from?', but that was more because I was mainly a USPM fan who didn't listen to much prog at the time, and was approaching the record 'from the outside,' as it were.

In terms of stylistics, I think that one of the reasons why Alder can be weaker on the more 'aggressive' tracks is that one of his main strengths is his ability to add subtle shifts between words and within lines, which is generally utilized best when he's given time to pronounce the words. This isn't exactly helped by the generic chorus-archetypes of Redemption and a couple of songs on X. On the other hand, when he needs to add some 'edge' to his voice in a way which works along with it, he is capable of doing things quite well, as in 'The Arena' for the early Alder (as well as, of course, 'Saints in Hell'), or the verses of 'Pieces of Me.' Nonetheless, it's true that Alder's vocals couldn't be applied to a more sonically aggressive, USPM-esque record like 'The Spectre Within,' at least without giving it a completely different significance (maybe less Psychotic Waltz and more Sider), in the same way that Arch couldn't work on APSoG.

But yes, with Alder you often have a sense of subtlety and deliberation, of the words 'breathing' so to speak, that isn't entirely compatible with forms of chorus and singing which feel more imposed than organic, or with more than a certain degree of harshness. Likewise, a vocalist like Kevin Moore couldn't exactly pull off 144,000 Gone in a way comparable to John Cyriis, or Azrael with the same sense as Midnight's rendition, and vice versa with those singers and OSI.

To be fair, though, at least on FWX it could also have to do with the issues which Alder comments on here: "I was busy myself, and writing that record, it was just kinda, it was really hard, actually. You know, trying to get around to other stuff, and I had done the Engine thing already, and I was, I’m trying to figure out how I should sing, you know, I changed my singing style a bit [for Engine], and it just didn’t really gel with what Fates did, you know what I mean? That’s me personally. I don’t think I did as good a job as I could have. Probably because, as I said, I was trying different things I probably shouldn’t have." The vocals in FWX, even on the softer songs, do work in a somewhat different way to those on 'Disconnected,' APSoG and such in any case, and interact with the music in quite an interesting way, perhaps more akin to the atmospheric elements of PS in a more later-Fates, sombre and personal context.


Yeah, while I can understand having that kind of reaction on first hearing Mark Shelton or someone along those lines, Arch has never really struck me as particularly offensive, or even inaccessible. Then again, I also generally don't see how an album like APSoG could be highly offensive or inspire strong feelings of revulsion, but it seems to do so quite often.


I'm not sure what this is supposed to entail. There's hardly any chance of Fates Warning going back from being a prog band to being a white-collar USPM band, so the 'early Fates Warning' isn't coming back in any case. Matheos has too much of a personality now.

In any case, the band Fates Warning has evolved over their last six or so albums to be pretty much Matheos' band, a fairly established character at this point, at least in the sense of the basic personality behind it being that of Matheos. While Ray Alder is pretty much appropriate to this, it wouldn't ultimately be compatible with Arch's vocals, and in 'Sympathetic Resonance' the two sides aren't really reconciled as yet, and the songs don't always cohere as a whole. Arch/Matheos is probably a more appropriate name for this band, given that it's not that close to either what Fates Warning has become through the majority of their career, or to the two 'early' Arch-era white-collar albums.

In Arch's words from 1996:



The fences were apparently mended a long time ago.

It's a shame he didn't land somewhere else for awhile there, granted I wouldn't be surprised if the scene was much smaller during the mid 90's or something.

Still waiting for him and Howie to join forces.

He nearly landed in Dream Theater, but decided that he wasn't up for getting back into the music business again.

This might be an odd request but bear with me. Some of you may have heard of Revocation, which are supposed to be some sort of new technical death/thrash band. Sounds super boring, right? I thought so to, until I heard this song, which is a pretty interesting modern take on total fucking speed metal. Just listen to the catchy pre-chorus at :56, or the part where the solo speeds up at 2:29. Death metal? Haha yeah right. However, this song is totally fucking awesome and I'm wondering if you guys know anything like it. I.e. super melodic modern speed/thrash metal with a bit of death metal influence only in the drumming and the vocals. Totally awesome meedly-meedly-moo style lead guitars are a must. Anybody up to the challenge? Arsis' debut is also a pretty good indicator of what I'm looking for, as well as this other Revocation track.

New Rage sounds pretty decent so far, maybe better than the past couple. At least one extreme metal influenced song in "Serial Killer," weird! It seems like a better-produced, slightly more polished, slightly better thought-out Carved in Stone, but I've just barely listened so far.

Empyreal's review of The Longest Night really hits the nail on the head (Haha). An excellent review of an amazing album. ... Though I still feel the debut is pretty damn awesome.