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I Fates Warning saranno noti ai più come alfieri di un progressive-metal che negli anni '90 spopolava insieme ai Dream Theater, ma pochi sanno che anch'essi conservano nell'armadio scheletri ingombranti, vestigia di un passato dimenticato e rinnegato (un po' come i Pantera cotonati degli esordi).
I primi 3 album del gruppo del Connecticut contenevano un epic-power metal che rappresenta una mosca bianca nel panorama metallico passato, presente e futuro, unici e irripetibili ma allo stesso tempo prodromi della svolta prog, avvenuta quando il chitarrista e leader del progetto Jim Matheos costringerà alla dipartita John Arch, cantante e tassello indispensabile del gruppo in questa fase.
L'esordio, "Night on Brocken" era grezzo, poco levigato, il seguente " Awaken The Guardian", rappresenta a detta di molti la maturità e l'apice di questi Fates Warning primaticci; nel mezzo si staglia questo "The Spectre Within", che a mio parere ha poco o niente da invidiare al successore.
Certo, è presente qualche passaggio involuto o poco scorrevole, ma mai l'opera apparirà ostica o poco scorrevole. Le chitarre sono in formissima, e saltibeccano con elegante agilità tra riff evocativi o che non sfigurerebbereo in un gruppo della Bay-Area, arpeggi decadenti e dialoghi solisti che prediligono un espressionismo melodico e sentimentale piuttosto che la fredda e plumbea tecnica. Ma è comunque il cantato ad essere il vero protagonista di questa parte inedita dl gruppo americano: John Arch ha un modo particolarissimo di concepire le sue linee vocali; se come timbro può ricordare Bruce Dickinson, non ha eguali il suo modo di affrontare strofe e ritornelli con un senso dell'armonia e una teatralità unici e debordanti, e che rende ogni canzone un mosaico di melodie ed emozioni, pennellando paesaggi con atmosfere fiabesche, magiche e selvagge.
Da canzoni elaborate e ricche di cambi di tempo come "Traveler in Time" , "Pirates of the Underground" o "Orphan Gypsy" con il suo ritornello sognante, si passa alla maestosità della lunga "Epitaph" e di "The Appariton" (chi apprezza il genere non può non cadere in un deliquio estatico da sindrome di Stendhal uditiva ascoltando l'accelerazione centrale), e con puntate sul Power più canonico di "Without a Trace" e "Kyrie Eleison".
Ma il comune denominatore rimane John Arch, che con i suoi saliscendi vocali conferiscono sempre quell'aura di romanticismo e fiera poesia che è il vero tratto distintivo della band in questa fase, dai più ignorata ma che merita assolutamente di essere riscoperta.
Elenco tracce testi e samples
01 Traveler in Time (07:13)
Old man time, Wisdom and Rhyme
Seeker of reason, reaper of time
Born to a spell he walks the beaten path
To hell, rusty shackles of time burden his mind
Once on his side time turns to defy.
In a flash of the lightning he's come and gone.
The clock strikes the hours, he climbs to the belfry
As he's done a thousand hours before.
Many dark years, not a vacant hour through
War and fear had the bell been ever strayed,
Hypnotized rhythmic pendulum synchronized
With the beat of the old man's heart.
Man or machine he's living a dream
Forever the clock lives so does he
Faces below fade with seasons of long ago
Forever awake in his brass bed.
Who holds the key.
It's all a matter of time, is there reason
Or Rhyme - is there?
Traveler in time another left
Behind - you are
Tangled in the web of time you've
Swallowed the pill of illusion.
Writings so clear on the wall you
Waste in seclusion
Mirror reflects the mark of the crowfoot
In his eyes now he realize.
Nearing his hour he climbs to the belfry
As he's done a thousand hours before
Moon of blue is in the sky
West wind he whispers why
Sacrifice living for life his perpetual vice
Lonely win blows through his empty soul.
He cries a river of tears on the clock below
Nothings forever and time will tell
His tears rust the clock and he died as well
04 Pirates of the Underground (07:07)
So you learn real hard, babe in the woods
Fight for your keep cause
Deep in the dark wolves rip at your
Heart as you lie asleep.
Endangered specie of the megahertz
Follow the yellow brick road, your
Asylum awaits you.
Sign on the dotted line.
Pirates of the underground, mutiny is in the air.
You're the wind in the sails mother ship
Drifters at sea remain to be, till
Land which speaks our tongue is found
n our way cut the tongues of dragons
Breathing fire
Ride the waves through the air down below
The mire.
Preacher man spins backward secret messages
What are you looking for? Something your
Subconscience can devise
Such a sin to disappoint your suspicion
Your force is ours there are no hidden lies
Tuned out in neutral vegetation, prime time
Bleeding hearts howl at the moon.
Foul temptress, oh she sings seduction,
As vultures feast forbidden fruit.
Live an abstract life in your hibernation.
A rude awakening for the underdog typhoon,
Set the thames on Fire.
Climb aboard this man of war
She'll take you far away
To a land of fantasy in your imagination.
05 The Apparition (05:50)
When the stars are right and you're alone
Take a journey, lock the world tight
Out of your mind.
The hall beckons your presence, the doors
Open wide you're to decide to turn back.
Deep the bowels of this black abyss.
Compelled I just can't resist it, take me
Take me away take me away
I wanna know what's deep within
Take me away
Drawing near someone passes through me,
A silent entity never looking back I won't dare
Evil eyes staring through he walls of stone
As I feared I travel not alone.
Laughter's echoes with the blatant wind
I have passed the threshold deep within me
A voice of thunder said turn back
Tabernacle is forbidden
No mortal dares to enter here
I want to know
Flame is burning center of a fountain yearning, waters
Spring eternal, spiritual water physical fire
Above center is sky, cold neverness
Just vastness filled with stars upon stars
In the four corners of life are the golden mirrors
Reflecting what you are and what you are to be
In the first is a young boy white dove in
His hand, in the second is a warrior in armor
In the third is the old man gold watch
In his hand fourth and last
No reflection at all
No reflection at all
No reflection at all
Waters rise toward physical fire, voice says
Tabernacle is forbidden never looking back I don't dare
If the water touches the flame
Forever in darkness yes I'll remain.
White dove flies from the young boys hand
Through the mirror of the old man, only way out
06 Kyrie Eleison (05:25)
Never thought my time was coming
Wasn't in my dreams
Twice I visioned I was falling down,
Down to the ground, I screamed out loud,
Woke on a cloud.
Never really a holy man even though
I understand the father son and Holy Ghost
He's the on that scares me most
Ashes to rain you feel no pain.
Hell fire burns my conscience. My mind explodes
Spine is severed, blood runs cold, confess the
Deepest of sin, invision a king
With a white violin.
Crucifix hung above my death bed begins
To bleed.
Imagination, lunacy, has he come to hear my plea,
Grant absolution condone my sin.
The lady in black I ask what do you see.
A glimpse in your glass what good
Fortune for me.
The lady in black said your lifeline is damned.
The tarot of death card she held in her hand.
Kyrie Eleison Christe Eleison
Kyrie Eleison Christe Eleison
Segments of my life flash through my mind
Things never seen.
It must be fate warning me for now
The walls are closing in. Rosary in Hand,
Lost grain of sand.
Here I go I start to fall again.
Try to scream I'm mute it is the
End of my last fall.
To the land of nevermore
Shatter her glass I woke on the floor
07 Epitaph (11:57)
Isolation freezes my life, coldness grips my heart
Trapped within a world, a world apart.
Desolate am I, a tempest raging silently.
Lost a barren adrift at sea.
Catatonic state, it sharpens life's depressing edge
The clamor draws me closer to the ledge
As I gaze upon this burning world I curse this life.
A life through which I'm hurled
Lies, lies upon this side and that
Truthless violence deception mourned by the wise.
Thousands of voices drowning out his own
In a popular torrent of lies upon lies
Turn to stone.
So intense the pain that has crawled
From the bleeding corpse of pleasure.
That feeds the worm the writhes
Inside my brain.
In the deep of night it stirs again
In the heart of the sleeper,
From the crack of dawn I wake to curse
The rising of the sun.
Every life is built on hope
Now my dreams have surely passed,
Inner voices haunt my numbered days
Darkness calls me with her laughs
Torn between life and death inertia
Fills my soul.
No will to be nor pride to care
Reapers take your toll.
Strangers cast a menacing glance as
Existence I defy.
Shatter their dream like world I'm not
Afraid to die
Omen bird soars the desert land to the castle
Of idolence, there lies the shadow of a man.
See the colored flowers and marble towers
They fade to brown
Like the unknown inscribed in stone
He's abandoned, abandoned flesh and bones
He's lost in silence swallowed in vastness
Drowned in the depths of a meaningless
Past
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