Fates Warning – Live In Athens

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InsideOut Music
Produced by Jim Matheos & Ray Alder

A second live DVD from the US progressive metal legends recorded on their 2005 World tour in support of latest album FWX.

Performance-wise the band are solid, each playing their role to perfection, but never stepping away from the pre-set line they follow. Ray Alder’s (vocals) emo posturing is a bit strange and off-putting and his performance is comfortably the most lacking of the band, never really hitting the high notes and sounding a little too monotonous for a progressive metal singer.

The setlist is good but draws mostly from the recent albums. With three-a-piece from the last two albums (Disconnected and FWX) and a further four from the two before those, only five tracks feature from albums dating before the mid-nineties, with none at all from the now-legendary first three records. This starts to make the setlist look a little unbalanced, lacking in bone fide classics such as At Fates Hands and Prelude To Ruin.

I don’t know what kind of venues Fates Warning have been playing in recent years, but the Gagarin seems like an odd choice for a live DVD recording. It’s dark and cramped, with clearly little room for the cameras to move around, and with very little in the way of stage lights there’s not much of a show going on around the band. Camera work is good, and the editing is good (no dizzying angle changes here), but there’s just not much to look at.

Overall this is a disappointing DVD. Fates Warning are an excellent band, easily as good as the luminaries they’re often compared with such as Dream Theater and Queensryche. Musically. But the one advantage these other bands have over FW, it seems, is that they are much more entertaining to watch. Perhaps it’s a question of money….

“ dark and cramped ”

Tracklist: One / A Pleasant Shade of Grey Part III / Life In Still Water / Heal Me / Pieces of Me / Face The Fear / Quietus / Another Perfect Day / A Pleasant Shade of Grey Part XI / The Eleventh Hour / Point of View / Monument / Still Remains / Nothing Left To Say
Bonus Features: Behind the Scenes – Excerpts from Bulgarian TV / Athens Rehearsal / Athens Soundcheck / Holland Headway Festival 2005 – Another Perfect Day / The Eleventh Hour

Written by Andy Lye
More: Live DVDs, Progressive, Fates Warning