FATES WARNING – Darkness In A Different Light (2013)

*

I will start this review a bit biased; I love FATES WARNING. They began as a heavy act during the eighties releasing solid material, but after a few albums, their progressive tendencies started to emerge. While retaining elements of their metal heritage, Fates Warning’s music grew increasingly complex, with much explorative longer tracks and interesting interwoven melodic elements added.
Fates Warning has been largely responsible for the infusion of progressive thinking into heavy metal music, as its co-founding compatriots of progressive metal, Dream Theater.
To put it plainly, their brand new album “Darkness In A Different Light” to be released next September 30 is everything older Fates Warning fans would want in a record without repeating themselves or getting too ‘friendly’, as many progressive music enthusiasts are wont to accuse.

“Darkness In A Different Light” is intelligent Prog Metal, and a really good one.
Every previous Fates Warning recordings seemed like the band picked a theme and a sound, and filtered every song through the blueprint. This has resulted in some great releases, but there were very few surprises after the first few songs. “Darkness In A Different Light” breaks from that mold and ends up being the most diverse, mature Fates Warning album to date.

The CD opens with the one-two punch of “One Thousand Fires” and “Firefly” where the band mean business between the sick riffing of Jim Matheos and Frank Aresti, the strengths of Ray Alder’s voice and the unbelievably tight-and-massive rhythm section of drummer Bobby Jarzombek and bassist Frank Aresti. Monolithic, killer stuff in terms of writing and playing.
But things quickly change. “Desire” adds modernism to the strong arrangements “Lighthouse” and “O Chloroform” go for amazing explorations while “Into the Black” even throws in some stylized movements.

It’s a solid kind of heavy though, in that there’s no one trying to out-play the other for the sake of a harder tone, nor are there needless solos strewn all over the place because ‘it’s progressive, man’. No. What Fates Warning have done is compose a heavy album in the name of really, really solid progressive music that never oversteps its boundaries or tries to be flashy beyond the point of enjoyability.
Even the fantastic fourteen-minute closer “And Yet It Moves” is filled with nothing but composure and musicianship, which is… well, awesome, in the way it builds off of different movements and moods throughout its duration (none of which consists of needless solos).

So where does “Darkness In A Different Light” fit into the canon of Fates Warning and the progressive metal genre? To be blunt, right at the top of their game.
They’ve been on the uptrend since the really good A Pleasant Shade of Gray in 1997 (which might seem like long ago, but there’s only two other albums in between) and “Darkness In A Different Light” only showcases a band that has gotten better with time. It’s heavy, it’s progressive, it’s melodic, and yes, it’s catchy as hell.
If “Darkness In A Different Light” isn’t in your ‘best of the year’ list in 2013, there may be something fundamentally wrong with you.
Awesome record.

01. One Thousand Fires
02. Firefly
03. Desire
04. Falling
05. I Am
06. Lighthouse
07. Into The Black
08. Kneel And Obey
09. O Chloroform
10. And Yet It Moves

Ray Alder – vocals
Jim Matheos – guitar, production
Frank Aresti – guitar
Joey Vera – bass
Bobby Jarzombek – drums

Pre-Order:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00EHZUMCU
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