FATES WARNING — Awaken The Guardian (review)

FATES WARNING — Awaken The Guardian album cover Album · 1986 · US Power Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
5/5 ·
Time Signature
Time Long Past...

Genre: progressive metal

A prog metal classic, "Awaken the Guardian" certainly is recommendable as it contains several great tunes blending various subtypes of its contemporary metal universe.

Originally released in 1986, "Awaken the Guardian" was very much ahead of its time taking progressive metal one step further, in many ways building on what Maiden had established, blending it in with a bit of thrash metal and a lot of power metal.

For some time, I felt that the one weakness is the incongruity between the overall production and John Arch's admittedly unique and impressive voice. The problem to me was that the general production is rather brutal, the guitars having almost a death metal quality to them with a lot of distortion and a lot of bottom, leaving Arch's vocals often flowing about the place which in turn means that, I tended not to notice the vocals and focus on the music. However, now, I can really appreciate it, and I think that the contrast works beautifully. From being the most salient weakness of the album, this contrast has become one of the qualities that I appreciate the most.

"Awaken the Guardian" certainly is a progressive metal milestone and recommendable to any prog metal head.
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