Fates Warning - Theories of Flight

Hold up. I don't think that's the right...

That's better!

Fates Warning is one of the more interesting bands in the progressive metal scene. Their first couple of albums in the mid 80's leaned further towards the power metal spectrum, particularly thanks to their vocalist John Arch's distinctive high-octave lines, often mirroring the guitars along a winding path that eschewed traditional song structures. After Arch was "let go" (fired) in '87 the band shifted into a more conventional heavy/progressive metal style with replacement (and still current) frontman Ray Alder taking over as they managed to piece together some success thanks to a couple of minor-league hit singles in the early '90s.

After '94s low point Inside Out, the band popped the clutch again and dropped into full-on progressive metal beginning with their '97 watershed A Pleasant Shade of Grey and continuing on into the present day, with their latest record Theories of Flight. Despite the cover art weirdly mirroring Chroma Key's Dead Air for Radios, keyboard maestro Kevin Moore was unfortunately not involved with this album despite his past work as a defacto member of the band throughout the 90's and 00's after his ejection from prog metal kingpins Dream Theater.

What's odd about Fates Warning for me is that I'm only really a fan of their later work in the late '90s and onward. Usually when I decide that I like a band, I slowly get acclimated to all of their material and grow to appreciate it, at least a little bit (Psalm 9, looking at you). Not so much with these guys. Between the awful production, twisty-turny-look-how-cool-these-songs-we-wrote-are quality of the material, and John Arch "Arching it up" all over the first three albums I really have no interest in trying to get through that stuff again. Their "commercial" period albums never grabbed me either as Ray Alder is wailing just as hard as Arch was while the songwriting was... well, you decide if you like it or not. No judgements, just "if you're listening to it, it's for you" and I'm not listening to it anytime soon. Their releases from A Pleasant Shade of Grey and onward, though, have really put the hook in me, especially after finding out that Kevin Moore played keyboards on several albums during this period. I'm a huge fan of OSI so going back to this Fates Warning material is kind of like reading a book backwards, I guess, so I already know the ending and I'm just trying to figure out if I like the rest of it.

Theories of Flight, then, arrives three years after Fates' return with Darkness in a Different Light, which broke a nine year silence that was welcomed with open arms. Continuing in the same vein as that record, Theories is a OSI-esque blend of thick riffs, heavy riffs, and crunchy riffs that will be familiar to anyone who listened to Darkness. In all seriousness though, Theories is on the whole much more cohesive and sharply written than its predecessor, doing an excellent job of blending guitarist and overall band mastermind Jim "Jimmy" Matheos' piercing axe work and progressive ambition, especially on the shorter and punchier tracks like "Seven Stars" and "Like Stars Our Eyes Have Seen". Vox man Ray Alder sounds better here at 49 than he has in decades as his lower, almost soulful range complements the more mid-tempo material beautifully. Special notice has to be given in particular for his frankly breathtaking performance on the second disc's acoustic materials, especially the cover of Toad the Wet Sprocket's "Pray Your Gods" and Uriah Heep's "Rain". Mainstay bassist Joey Vera continues to act as the quiet anchor of the group, capable of delivering both a dirty lead and a full-throated foundation to Matheos' leads apparently effortlessly. Bobby Jarzombek makes a much better case for his spot in this band on Theories than he did on Darkness, but it seems that much of the blame rests on the shoulders of both albums' mediocre production that is all too common in modern metal. Guitars and vocals are overpowering loud in the mix while the bassist struggles to maintain audible volume as the drums are reduced to a horribly compressed, flat sonic register that detracts from the listening experience here more than any of the material.

Like Darkness, Theories skips the ballad stuff and delivers instead several tracks of straight-ahead crunch ("Seven Stars", "Like Stars Our Eyes Have Seen", "White Flag"), knotty prog ("SOS", "The Light and Shade of Things"), and the Last Song on the Album Epic™ "The Ghosts of Home". With a runtime of just over fifty minutes and with only seven actual songs the whole thing is over surprisingly quickly - either a quirk of the material or the production, but in any case appreciated over Darkness's bloat (imo). The lyrics are vague and non-cringey, the writing is tight, and the second disc of acoustic stuff is almost worth the price of admission by itself.

B+ (with acoustic disc, A-)