Is Fates Warning underrated?
Printed From: Progarchives.com
Category: Progressive Music Lounges
Forum Name: Prog Bands, Artists and Genres Appreciation
Forum Description: Discuss specific prog bands and their members or a specific sub-genre
URL: http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=95465
Printed Date: April 25 2024 at 19:27
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Topic: Is Fates Warning underrated?
Posted By: javajeff
Subject: Is Fates Warning underrated?
Date Posted: October 05 2013 at 22:20
| Going back through the Fates Warning catalog, and I really enjoy this band. Does anyone feel they are underrated? I ordered the new album and look forward to hearing it. |
Replies:
Posted By: RedNightmareKing
Date Posted: October 05 2013 at 23:08
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They're not too underrated here, just not mentioned particularly often. I feel like they're constantly overshadowed by their peers Dream Theater, Queensryche, and Symphony X a little too much.
------------- I consider drone metal to be progressive... |
Posted By: iamathousandapples
Date Posted: October 05 2013 at 23:24
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Fates Warning is definitely overlooked, as is Prog Metal in general, and even then the heavier you go the less it tends to get mentioned.
Underrated I definitely wouldn't say so, as everyone I've had listen to a Fates Warning album has had a really high regard for it. ------------- http://www.last.fm/user/thamazingbender" rel="nofollow"> 
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Posted By: jammindude
Date Posted: October 05 2013 at 23:44
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I would say they are under rated. Not just from the standpoint of criminally overlooked by the populace in general...but even by their own fan base. Generally, you have fans that like a certain era(s) while dismissing others. It's actually pretty cool to grow with band. When I discovered them in '83, I was into what they were doing. As I grew, they grew with me. As a consequence, I personally love every note they've ever played. ------------- "Better the pride that resides In a citizen of the world Than the pride that divides When a colorful rag is unfurled" -Neil Peart |
Posted By: verslibre
Date Posted: October 06 2013 at 00:27
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Underrated a bit, yes. In the late 80s Queensryche, then Dream Theater, got the spotlight. Fates should have got some of it but for whatever reason, just as they seemed ready to break through to Tier 1, it never happened. ------------- https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_ipg=50&_sop=1&_rdc=1&_ssn=musicosm" rel="nofollow - eBay |
Posted By: King Manuel
Date Posted: October 06 2013 at 01:08
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I do not very often listen to FW. But whenever I do, I really enjoy them. The thing with FW is I have to be in a certain mood. Its not "everyday music". For example, A Pleasant Shade of Grey is masterpiece! But I usually only once or twice per year feel like listening to it. So, I don't think they are underrated. They just occupy a very special niche. ------------- Don't Bore Us, Get To The Chorus |
Posted By: stonebeard
Date Posted: October 06 2013 at 01:53
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They are at least more consistent than Queensryche. It's kind of weird that they're forgotten. Maybe it's because of their more power metal/heavy metal leanings and that they didn't have an insanely popular classic album (Operation: Mindcrime). ------------- http://soundcloud.com/drewagler" rel="nofollow - My soundcloud. Please give feedback if you want! |
Posted By: javajeff
Date Posted: October 06 2013 at 06:41
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What is strange is that no Fates Warning album has been rated more than 250 times at PA, and this is a site that goes crazy for progressive metal. I am not saying the amount of ratings can transcend to popularity, but it does mean something. I think you have to be in a mood to listen to any type of music. My everyday music is usually the newest stuff that I bought and will play to death until I have to go back through my catalog. |
Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: October 06 2013 at 06:50
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Only really familiar with their first three LPs but those are at least on par with what Queensr˙che were doing at the same time... if not even better. I can understand why FW are nowhere as popular, though. Their style is way more inaccessible and they have a not undeserved reputation for taking an extremely long time to "get". ------------- "The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook |
Posted By: moshkito
Date Posted: October 06 2013 at 11:11
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Hi
Saw them here on their tour with Queensryche and Dream Theater, and sadly, the majority of the audience were all fanboys and fangirls, and ignored them, and they put on a fine show, and a gutsy one, too! ------------- Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told! www.pedrosena.com |
Posted By: Jbird
Date Posted: October 06 2013 at 12:56
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I love FW. 1st I ever heard of them though was when Perfect Symmetry came out, the local mall record store where I was stationed at (Sumter, SC) was playing it as I entered the store one day, and I was hooked. I then started to collect their previous albums. The one album I don't really care for is APSOG, which seems to be the one album everyone else loves. I just think it sounds too weird, and doesn't rock out at all.
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Posted By: Blood&Chemistry
Date Posted: October 07 2013 at 17:28
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I believe so yes they don't get nearly enough credit as they should Awaken The Guardian deserves to be up there with Operation Mindcrime and Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory in the pantheon of essential prog metal albums. |
Posted By: TheProgtologist
Date Posted: October 07 2013 at 19:41
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I wan't a big fan when they first started out,I thought they were a group of Iron Maiden wannabe's,but their later albums convinced me otherwise.Definitely underrated,imo.
BTW.....their new album is superb.  -------------  |
Posted By: Mellotron Storm
Date Posted: October 07 2013 at 19:43
Well you got into them 20 years before I did but they are my favourite Metal band. Cool story though about growing with them. Disconnected, Awaken The Guardian and Perfect Symmetry are all so different from one another but each one is incredible in my opinion. A very, very talented bunch. ------------- "The wind is slowly tearing her apart" "Sad Rain" ANEKDOTEN |
jammindude wrote:Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: October 09 2013 at 15:11
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It might also be worth mentioning that in my (admittedly anecdotal) experience FW are way more popular in metal circles than in prog-rock circles.
------------- "The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook |
Posted By: progbethyname
Date Posted: February 10 2014 at 17:40
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Fates Warning I think are quite underrated in my opinion. I mean sure people who are serious and know progressive rock very well in general have either heard about about FW or know that they are a band that helped build a whole sub genre of prog with 'progressive metal.' I think a lot can be said about just how good FATES truly are and the best part is they are still making music that is both relevant and flat-out sounds bloody amazing. I did write more or less a pretty one-sided enthusiastic review for their latest album. Lets just say that I think personally I could not bare to wait another 9 years for an album release. I'm on a Fates High right now, so I maybe thinking rather biasedly with my line of thinking feeling that they are super-underrated! I think Fates Warning should have the same exposure and success that Metallica has had. I really honestly feel that isn't stretching it at all. Anyway. Here is my review if anyone is interested. It's a bit long-winded but I couldn't help myself. Lol http://www.progarchives.com/Review.asp?id=1129821" rel="nofollow - http://www.progarchives.com/Review.asp?id=1129821 ------------- Gimmie my headphones now!!! 🎧🤣 |
Posted By: progbethyname
Date Posted: February 10 2014 at 17:43
Oh man they are far more consistent than the Ryche cause after Promise Land in 1994 it's been a real bed-sh*tter, although their latest album minus Tate wasn't bad. First album I could listen to through and through with not much to complain about in 20 years!! Well...19 to be exact. :) ------------- Gimmie my headphones now!!! 🎧🤣 |
Posted By: Mellotron Storm
Date Posted: February 10 2014 at 18:33
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I still need to get their latest, it's on my list. I'm a sucker for the related projects as well like OSI, Chroma Key, John Arch solo and the album he did with Matheos recently. Nice review Mr. Progbethyname, it certainly has me itching to get it. ------------- "The wind is slowly tearing her apart" "Sad Rain" ANEKDOTEN |
Posted By: progbethyname
Date Posted: February 10 2014 at 18:38
John I think you'll give it at least a 4. It grows on you fast! It moves buddy...it moves. ;) Thanks for your kind words as well. Oh and try to get the 2cd special edition. The 2nd disc although just has 4 tracks on it is a very good listen. :) ------------- Gimmie my headphones now!!! 🎧🤣 |
Posted By: Mellotron Storm
Date Posted: February 10 2014 at 19:07
Thanks for the heads up about the 2cd edition because I usually pass on stuff like that. I did give FWX 4 stars so i'm sure it will be 4 stars minimum especially from a fanboy like myself. ------------- "The wind is slowly tearing her apart" "Sad Rain" ANEKDOTEN |
Posted By: progbethyname
Date Posted: February 10 2014 at 19:24
^ man, your in for a good time then. I can say with all my Prog heart, that Darkness In A Different Light eats FWX for breakfast. It slays it. Happy listening man. Think it'll go over well.  ------------- Gimmie my headphones now!!! 🎧🤣 |
Posted By: Mellotron Storm
Date Posted: February 10 2014 at 19:41
Thanks Nicholas, it's good to see someone else so passionate about this band. I have no doubt that i'll love this. ------------- "The wind is slowly tearing her apart" "Sad Rain" ANEKDOTEN |
Posted By: proggman
Date Posted: February 10 2014 at 22:04
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I think Fates Warning are very underrated and also think they're one of the best Progressive Metal bands. ------------- When he rides, my fears subside. For darkness turns once more to light. Through the skies, his white horse flies. To find a land beyond the night. |
Posted By: Thrashdaddy
Date Posted: December 28 2015 at 07:58
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First off, I would like to say Hello. This is my first posting on this forum and likely will not be the last. To give you a brief synopsis of me and my musical tastes: I am Canadian, was a young teen in the very early 80s and was very well entrenched in my interests of heavy and progressive forms of music from very early childhood, as I was introduced to one of the WIDEST and most prolific music collectors that I had know (my mother of all people!). I was born in '67 and was rocking out to Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Iron Butterfly and Rush (although they were from the middle of the 70s - living in Toronto had me exposed to Rush before they hit the airwaves and commercial success) from the earliest of my memories and kept looking for more music that compared favourably with these bands. Yes, my sister and I also grew up enjoying an ecclectically wide variety of music, too - going through the pop of the 70s and early 80s from Yes, the Cars, Teenage Head all the way through to Blondie, Sugarhill Gang, Styx, The Ramones and everything in between. My life took a dark turn at the end of the 70s and at the beginning of the 80s which really pushed me into the darker and heavier sounds of music at that time: Iron Maiden (with Paul Di Anno on vocals), Anvil, Razor, Voivod, Celtic Frost, Omen, Fates Warning and Queensryche all by 1984. I had always been a Metal/Thrash/Punk fan but the driving force of my appetite was the pure musicianship that I have enjoyed with early Fates Warning, Queensryche's 4 song demo (Queen Of The Ryche), Omen's Warning Of Danger (although I was into them with Curse Of The Dragon when that record was released), Iron Maiden's Killers and Metallica's Ride The Lightning, Anvil's Metal On Metal and especially Forged In Fire albums and Finally Razor's Evil Invaders albums. These are still the seminal albums that I enjoy to this day and they play frequently in my daily life. Honourable mentions go out to Infernal Majesty for their metal assaulting brilliance and Type O Negative for their heavy goth stylings that swept me up and the end of '89 and the beginning of '90 - when I first heard Black No 1. They are also part of my seminal collection that gets played regularly. As to the topic of Fates Warning being underrated: Hell yeah! I have ALWAYS felt that they deserved more attention than they have been given, just like Anvil (the Godfathers of Thrash), Omen (the Godfathers of operatic metal) and Razor (pure out technical aggression thrash). But unfortunately, the masses of humanity don't dig heavy stuff, so they have been glossed over by the more commercially accessible pap-smears from Queensryche post demo stylings and Dream Theatre (which I can't sit through still as it is all BORING!). Five years ago, working with a friend of a friend and hanging around a fair bit together, we started checking into some prog rock and prog metal bands that stimulated our tastes (my friend being just a little less attuned to heaviness than I am); we have come to explore bands like Mogwai (although I have liked Mogwai since the late 70s or very early 80s from a tv show called New Music on CITY tv), Porcupine Tree and Spock's Beard. My friend has been a subscriber to another prog rock review site and has far more knowledge and access to bands than I have reached out for. I still look for new bands that raise my eyebrows and get my feet tapping, head rocking and hands drumming along - you know the REALLY good bands make all three happen simultaneously, whereas maybe the decent bands will get one of those to happen depending upon mood/activity. It's just like the tv shows: The Voice and American Idol - if it ain't country, none of the country bumpkins will endorse it or give it any attention and the whole entertainment industry buries it. I kind of shake my head and walk away from the idiots that only drink the kool aid that the mass media pushes. There is soooooo much more out there that is way BETTER to enjoy, you just gotta look a little harder. I promise!!!!! |
Posted By: progbethyname
Date Posted: December 28 2015 at 14:56
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^ that's a great post. Nice read. Thank you. Lastly, fates warning are quite respected and reveared in the progworld, but globally they like many other great Prog bands, are not widely known so most pit that circumstance with in an underrated category. Fates warning have a pretty good following but it seems not many are aware of this band because they are Prog and a lot if what they do isn't radio friendly. Anyhow. This is a great band and I very much wish they would be marketed more cause they can do it all. ;) ------------- Gimmie my headphones now!!! 🎧🤣 |
Posted By: I Love Internet
Date Posted: December 28 2015 at 21:19
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I just checked my last.fm account and FW was sitting at 8th place in the alltime charts. I used to look at my so called neighbours at last fm and I rarely saw FW very high on anyones list. So I´d say yes they are underrated. And I guess it also shows a lack of intrest for the band in Finland that they haven´t played here as far as I know. I really love this band. FWX is my favorite by them and I also don´t really get all the hype about Pleasant Grey. Also I hear there´s a new FW album coming in the first half of next year! At least that´s what it says on their facebook page. ------------- I like my eggs boiled and that´s it! |
Posted By: Dayvenkirq
Date Posted: December 28 2015 at 21:39
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^^^ (@Thrashdaddy) You can start your own thread in the http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_topics.asp?FID=43" rel="nofollow - Welcome newbies lounge and edit this ^^^ post of yours accordingly.
Cheers, Andrey (a.k.a. Dayvenkirq)
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Posted By: TheNyteFli
Date Posted: December 28 2015 at 21:56
| To a degree yes and their drummer Mark Zonder is most certainly woefully underrated. He is rarely ever mentioned among the best of metal and progressive rock drummers and he certainly should be. He is very bit as if not MORE talented than a Scott Rockenfield (Queensryche) for example. |
Posted By: Toaster Mantis
Date Posted: December 31 2015 at 06:07
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Like I said earlier, I get the impression Fates Warning are (perhaps not surprisingly) way more respected in metal circles than in prog rock circles. Back when I posted on Metal-Archives from 2006-2008, I saw their name brought up for praise as an all-time great of the genre much more often than I do here. ------------- "The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook |
Posted By: rogerthat
Date Posted: December 31 2015 at 09:49
| ^^^ More the Jon Arch line up though. The Mark Zonder lineup seems to fall in a sort of no mans land, with neither the prog crowd nor the metal crowd taking after them. Fun fact: Arch auditioned for Dream Theater and claimed they tried to get him to sing in ways he disliked. |
Posted By: thebeastmustdie
Date Posted: December 31 2015 at 15:22
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can't say I'm a huge fan of their stuff except for Parallels which is a very nice album of proggy melodic metal - almost like Dream Theater minus the pretention and campy self indulgence. have checked all their other albums out on youtube and none do it for me like Parallels does. actually I don't mind their first album Night On Broken either, but it almost sounds like a completely different band, quite early Maiden influenced.
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Posted By: zwordser
Date Posted: December 31 2015 at 18:01
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I think this post is full of FW fans. I only have one FW album: Parallels. It is decent, but when I first got it a couple years ago, I couldn't get into it much, preferring instead Voivod, Karnivool, (Some) Queensryche, Riverside, Pain of Salvation, and (some) Dream Theater (bands that I was also collecting at the time). Parallels has since grown on me slightly. ------------- Z |
Posted By: Prog-jester
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 10:21
Fantastically overlooked band, but mostly due to their own apathy in the 00-10s, too. Three albums in like 17 years? C'mon guys, how do you expect them people learn about you, when you're ignoring your own Facebook page for months and don't have an Instagram account ( ). On a totally serious note, I would give all Dream Theater discography for "Still Remains", this song is just perfect in any sense. The whole "Disconnected" is so ahead of its time, with all the digital guitars and electronic sounds, all that. Each and every "heavy" Prog band owes to this little record, from Riverside to Leprous-Arcana-you name them, all those djenty hipsters with tasteless albums sleeves these days |
Posted By: Cristi
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 10:29
well, Matheos and Alder especially were quite busy: Alder had a side project called Engine, two albums plus he is the vocalist of Redemption (new album to come this year) Matheos was busy especially with OSI (4 albums) plus Arch/Matheos and some guest appearances that I know of (he's got some solo albums as well). |
Posted By: Tapfret
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 12:03
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Perfect Symmetry is one of the most important albums in the evolution of progmetal to me. But their other albums really didn't stick with me. ------------- https://www.last.fm/user/Tapfret" rel="nofollow">  https://bandcamp.com/tapfret" rel="nofollow - Bandcamp |
Posted By: Tapfret
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 12:07
I was really excited to buy Parallels when it was released being a huge fan of the previous album, Perfect Symmetry. I was so disappointed because it basically sounded like a Queensryche album and I can't stand Queensryche. ------------- https://www.last.fm/user/Tapfret" rel="nofollow"> https://bandcamp.com/tapfret" rel="nofollow - Bandcamp |
Posted By: verslibre
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 12:35
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Where Fates Warning's Parallels is concerned, Queensryche (a band I do like up through Empire) never indulged the textures/themes present therein. The sole exception might be "Silent Lucidity" (which suffered from much FM overplay). To reiterate, I feel No Exit, Perfect Symmetry, Parallels and Inside Out are all stellar recordings.  ------------- https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_ipg=50&_sop=1&_rdc=1&_ssn=musicosm" rel="nofollow - eBay |
Posted By: Prog Snob
Date Posted: January 10 2016 at 13:17
I have to echo these sentiments. It has been a while since I listened to them, but Parallels has always been my favorite Fates CD. I enjoy their newer stuff but I feel like the sound they created on Parallels and Inside Out was their best.Maybe it's time to relisten to them. ------------- 
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Posted By: progbethyname
Date Posted: July 20 2016 at 08:30
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As the hand of FW Offers more exposure. It is to my understanding that FW's latest THEORIES OF FLIGHT is the #1 selling hard rock/metal album on amazon.com for the month of July 2016. People are catching on. Takes a while, but remember when petrol first came into the market as an alternative energy source it wasn't very well received. Most still wanted Coal!! Lol. Same thing, right? ------------- Gimmie my headphones now!!! 🎧🤣 |