GMD Poll: Fates Warning's Discography Ranked

[crimsonfloyd]

Directions: Rank Fates Warning's studio albums. Order and number each album 1-12. Ties are OK. Your first place album earns 12 points, your second place album earns 11 points, etc.

Rules:

• You may rank as few as 7 albums. Lists with less than 7 albums will not be counted.
• If you list less than 12 albums, the first placed album will still get 12 points, the last placed album will still get 1 point, and the albums in between will have points distributed proportionately. The average points earned for albums that are not listed will not be impacted positively or negatively, so if you don't rank an album, you neither help it or hurt it.

At the end, the albums will be ranked based on their average number of points per vote.

You have until Friday, September 28th to finalize your list, re-familiarize yourself albums you haven’t heard in awhile, familiarize yourself with albums you haven’t heard at all, lobby for any albums you think are underrated, and lobby against any albums you think are overrated.

And please, no pseudo-Machiavelli shit. Just rank them as you see them.

Night on Bröcken (1984)
The Spectre Within (1985)
Awaken the Guardian (1986)
No Exit (1988)
Perfect Symmetry (1989)
Paralells (1991)
Inside Out (1994)
A Pleasant Shade of Grey (1997)
Disconnected (2000)
Fates Warning X (2004)
Darkness in a Different Light (2013)
Theories of Flight (2016)

 

[CiG]

<3

 

[HamburgerBoy]

1. The Spectre Within - absolute mastery of the metal artform, will never be improved upon, 10/10
2. A Pleasant Shade of Grey - bored me initially, but all the brooding moodiness and subtlety gradually caught on, the way they take earlier ideas and gradually play with them and turn them on their head is unlike much else, amazing atmosphere and depth and Zonder at his very best, 10/10
3. Perfect Symmetry - wide range of ideas without feeling disjointed, you want cold robotic stuff you've got it, you want poppy hooks that led their next 1.5 albums you got it, stilted prog epics, galloping melodic anthems, does it all while maintaining top consistency, 9/10
4. Disconnected - getting really alt-metal/rock here but the writing and musicianship are still phenomenal, the electronic elements are better incorporated than anything OSI (or pretty much any metal band) has tried, has a giant oppressive urban dystopia feeling too, 9/10
5. Inside Out - has a couple songs that deserve the Parallels-redux reputation but that's all, it's a technical powerhouse all the way through and still touches some emotional points, Face the Fear and Monument might be my two favorite songs not on the top two albums, 9/10
6. Awaken the Guardian - an objective step down from The Spectre Within in all respects but obviously it's still great, the muffled production is pretty crap and buries Arch's voice but every once in a while I can get past that and really engage the album, still has a few amazingly touching songs but at the same time there's a lot of average sorta-thrash chuggery here, for all the hate Bay Area thrash bands get this should be recognized as the first album to suffer Master of Puppets syndrome, 8/10
7. Parallels - like many this was my first favorite and there's no denying that in terms of pure aural qualities that this is perfect, lush guitar melodies and Terry Brown production make this spotless from a purely listening perspective, but it's still yacht metal overall, the hooks are there but I've gotten a little tired of them, 8/10
8. No Exit - a strong, sometimes-fantastic 4 song EP with 20 minutes of songish bits tacked on, the gated snare and kinda dry guitar tone hurt it further, but it's still vintage Fates and has too many things I love to not enjoy a lot overall, 7/10
9. FWX - a few months ago I started going through assorted hair and butt metal CDs my dad owned that I hadn't rated on RYM, and over the course of that I had realized that this could have been a slightly more ambitious Flaw album, I still think a few songs are very good though, 6/10
10. Theories of Flight (2016) - tightening their belt a bit relative to the preceding, two fewer songs and four minutes shorter seemed to go a ways, it's still a bit clinical and lacking the aesthetic focus of their first ten, and the mellow stuff doesn't grab me like I want it to, but the songs are mostly distinct writing-wise, 6/10
11. Night on Bröcken - Damnation and Soldier Boy are very good but still not quite masterpieces, the others are various degrees of mediocre Maiden clonery, dozens of bands obscure and famous alike were way ahead in 1984, thankfully they'd soon receive divine knowledge, 5/10
12. Darkness in a Different Light - not actually bad but they lost their identity here, the opener is almost a winkwinknudgenudge to their 90s period but then it goes into one just-decent modern-proge rock song after the next, if Leprous performed this I wouldn't even bother, the only songs I know from memory are the bad ones, and Kneel and Obey is their worst song ever, 5/10

Greatest metal band. Might relisten to Inside Out and Disconnected and flip them.

 

[The Ozzman]

You missed some rankings in that fucking novella of yours

 

[Krow]

This will be my second sit out in a row. Their style just doesn’t interest me after the first three. I doubt I’d even be able to get through the albums.

 

[Omni]

I'll do this one. It's a good excuse to relisten to the ones that I haven't heard in a while.

 

[Dak]

Fates Warning? Never heard of her.

 

[The Ozzman]

Listened to Night on Brocken and thought that was okay but couldn't even get through Spectre Within or No Exit without shutting them off and listening to something else. I'll wait for The Chasm (surprisingly)

 

[TechnicalBarbarity]

no thanks. I'll be sitting this one out.

 

[Oblivious Maximus]

1. Perfect Symmetry
2. A Pleasant Shade of Gray
3. Parallels
4. No Exit
5. Awaken the Guardian
6. The Spectre Within
7. Disconnected
8. Night on Bröcken
9. Inside Out

I need to sit down with the last three.

 

[CiG]

So many cucks.

 

[challenge_everything]

John Arch makes me wanna tear my ears off.

 

[TechnicalBarbarity]

... easily one of the most annoying vocalists i have EVER heard.

 

[Mort Divine]

then gtfo this thread

 

[TechnicalBarbarity]

then gtfo this thread

blow me

 

[HamburgerBoy]

To be fair, you have to have a very high musical IQ to understand Fates Warning.

 

[TechnicalBarbarity]

To be fair, you have to have a very high musical IQ to understand Fates Warning.

... says the guy who thinks Fabulous Disaster is a "masterpiece" and black label society albums are better than Mystification

The same guy who thinks Coroners RIP isn't thrash and that Slayer have no "obligatory classics".

 

[CiG]

 

[TechnicalBarbarity]

 

[HamburgerBoy]

... says the guy who thinks Fabulous Disaster is a "masterpiece"

Correct

and black label society albums are better than Mystification

I haven't listened to a BLS album in a long time but I'm pretty sure I'm right

The same guy who thinks Coroners RIP isn't thrash

That's an objective statement of fact, nothing to do with taste.

and that Slayer have no "obligatory classics".

I've since recanted. In any case, the definition of "obligatory classic" I used at the time was more stringent than it should have been, and an absence of filler was a requirement. I still maintain that every Slayer album with the exception of Hell Awaits has obvious weak points.