Fates Warning - Awaken The Guardian (1986) (1994, Japan PHCR-16155)

I bought this album used, cheap, on a bit of a lark. My knowledge of Fates Warning at the time did not extend beyond name recognition; I thought they were some kind of heavy/power metal band, but wasn't completely sure. I expected some light listening that I'd be sick of in a week or two. But that's not how it went. I was so very much impressed on first listen that I questioned my prejudices against power metal. Was this album really as good as seemed to be? Had I unfairly written off power metal? If Fates Warning are really are this good, why aren't they receiving much higher praise than, for instance, Helloween or Blind Guardian?

Here's something you've heard before: I never could get into power metal because it's just way too cheesy for me – but wait! It's pretty cheesy to put on makeup and shriek about the devil, isn't it? Or to oink like a pig about murdered women over a backdrop of tuned-to-Z guitars and nonstop blastbeats? What's so particularly cheesy about fantasy lyrics or high-pitched singing compared to that sort of nonsense? Well, not much. Cheese runs deeper than that – it denotes insipidity, predictability, triteness – things which this album wholly lacks, in spite of possessing, in spades, fantasy lyrics, high-pitched singing, and a number of other familiar tropes. I like to think that I have every possible bias against the band from the start – I don't even like Iron Maiden all that much, and Fates Warning aren't extremely heavy even by power metal standards (the usual proposed antidote for power metal skeptics is a “heavy” album like Helloween's The Dark Ride. This misses the point, and never convinces anyone). But there's no getting around the quality of the songwriting and arrangement here. It's so… composed-sounding. John Arch's vocal lines deserve the most credit for being so very far away from the dopey sing-a-long melodies one might fear, but it goes right down into all the riffs, all the song structures, all the everything. It's all just very good music where one might expect an excruciating series of vapid choruses and guitar demonstrations.

Fates Warning doesn't seem to be particularly highly regarded among power metal fans; they're certainly well-liked but don't seem to break into the top tier. Maybe they're just not buying what this band is selling – when a power metal fan comments about a band being “pretty much the only good death metal band,” I have sense enough to stay the hell away, so I suppose it works both ways. Thus, this album is highly recommended for fans of Morbid Angel, Burzum, and Immolation – folks who otherwise might not catch wind of it.

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