LONG DAY GOOD NIGHT

"Long Day Good Night" is the 13th full-length studio album by US progressive metal act Fates Warning. The album was released through Metal Blade Records in November 2020. It´s the successor to "Theories Of Flight" from 2016 and features the same four-piece core lineup as the predecessor. Guitarist Frank Aresti is not involved in session work this time around, but Michael Abdow returns to play a couple of guitar solos.

Stylistically the material on "Long Day Good Night" continues the relatively riff heavy but at the same time melodic progressive metal of "Theories Of Flight (2016)". Fates Warning haven´t had a history of releasing the same album twice, but this time it´s close. Maybe they´ve finally locked into a groove because "Theories Of Flight (2016)" also felt very much like the sibling album to "Darkness In A Different Light (2013)". Personally that´s fine by me, because both of the two direct predecessors were high quality progressive metal releases as only Fates Warning make them. To my ears "Long Day Good Night" is like listening to the early 90s mainstream heavy rock/metal oriented Fates Warning releases, but with an added metallic heaviness, providing the music with a more contempoary edge (the same can be said about the more heavy and meaty sound production). The soaring melancholic choruses of the early 90s are in place, but the riffs and the heavy busy drumming still make "Long Day Good Night" quite a different sounding release to the mentioned albums from the 90s.

Although "Long Day Good Night" features both heavy riffs and rhythms it´s overall a very dynamic release, with loads of mellow and more subdued moments too. Again this is nothing unusual for Fates Warning and upon conclusion "Long Day Good Night" is in many ways Fates Warning by numbers. I know that has a very negative ring to it, and that´s partially intentional, because while "Long Day Good Night" is another high quality Fates Warning album and tracks like "The Destination Onward" and the 11:29 minutes long "The Longest Shadow Of The Day" (which opens with a 6 minutes long instrumental section) are strong compositions, there are tracks featured on the album which fall under the filler catagory (the mainstream oriented "Under The Sun" is even a little weak) and at 72:35 minutes of playing time it can be argued that the album is too long for its own good. I would have prefered a 40-50 minutes long playing time with only the sharpest and the most memorable material featured. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is still deserved though.

(Originally posted on Metal Music Archives)