Jasonic - I know you and I have not exchanged much verbiage on here before. But I appreciate you posting these two songs and mentioning these two albums.
My favorite era of Fates Warning was when I discovered
Awaken the Guardian the week it was released. I remember walking into the mall record store - yes, just before cds were being sold mass market - and looking through the Metal Blade display area. The album art of AtG immediately entranced me. And of course being a Dungeons & Dragons player the song titles intrigued me. So without knowing what a single note sounded like, I plunked down the cash (probably $8.99) and bought my first Fates Warning album. I took it home, put it on the turntable, and escaped into an undiscovered world.
I have that one, No Exit, and Perfect Symmetry on Vinyl. I had first-run copies of the first two Arch albums on CD as well (along with AtG) until someone broke into my home about 10+ years ago and stole all 116 of the cds in my
apparently easily transportable cd rack.
I've since replaced only TSW and ATG with the reissues. And I still own the aforementioned vinyls, though the latter years FW never grabbed me. Perfect Symmetry was the final FW album for me.
Anyway, back to my point... Fates Warning was a breakthrough band for me, as was Savatage and Sanctuary in the late 80's. I discovered them all within a couple of years of each other. And to this day they ALL remain in rotation because nothing produced in the 'current' metal market comes close to touching the energy and soul put into those early records. There is so much emotion in the song
Guardian. Very few current artists have been able to touch my heart the way that song does.
Awaken the Guardian remains in my personal favorite top ten metal albums of all time.
Thanks again for posting this. Hopefully a few of the latter day ProgPower fans will make a startling new discovery with early Fates Warning.
~Hoyt.
