Fates Warning - Perfect Symmetry (1989)^{Release ID: 2309}

Most people consider “Awaken the Guardian” to be Fates Warning’s shining moment, but the album that outshone everything else by miles to me is “Perfect Symmetry.”

Perfect Symmetry is the band’s transition from a fantastical, proggy almost-Power Metal band into a full fledged modern Progressive Metal band, and one of the first albums ever to conceptualize this sound. Gone are the tales of high fantasy and abandoned are the speedy and uplifting metal epics that iconized their earlier sound. Here, they have traded their swords and steeds in acceptance of the reality that the world is a cold, unfriendly place that eats dreamers alive. They have become part of a machine of finely tuned skill and technicality – here the whole band play incredibly complex parts, alone but in unison, creating a cacophony of different melodies and rhythms that never play against each other.

One mistake you could make in reading that is to think they have become technical cogs incapable of producing melodies of beautiful passion. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Vocalist Ray Alder commands his voice like an instrument, but never shies away from simply crying out the sorrows of being smothered in the constraints of modern society. The lyrics across the board sound like those of a man who dreamed of grandeur as a child, but had those dreams quashed by reality. The only options are to hold out a last shred of hope that tomorrow holds something new, or allow oneself to die internally in order to carry on.

The music knows exactly when to dance the lines between progressive technical showcasing, soft passages of pure beauty, or simply catchy melodies. The band does include some strings on a few tracks that harken back to their fantasy sound (interestingly, it’s the least bleak songs with this touch). The titles might also fool you into thinking they’re still a fantasy band – tracks like “At Fate’s Hands” sound entirely medieval in nature. In reality, the song is about being helpless to make your own way in a world where people are smothered to fit roles and voices of the common are not heard. The burden of a modern society is disguised by poetic and timeless words that could apply just about anywhere if not for the context of the album.

It is a jarring shift from their old sound. It’s probably not what fans wanted. It’s also entirely pessimistic, introspective and subtly conscious. To me, it’s the perfect album from Fates Warning.