Fwx by Fates Warning (CD, Oct-2004, Metal Blade)

Well, FATES WARNING are offering, yet, another great album to themselves and add another highly significant stone to the wall of Progressive Metal. Yep, they are offering “X” to themselves and this is not a piss taker comment. “X” will not gain them any new fans and will not disappoint the fan base they created since, say, “Inside Out”. A slightly complex, always innovative, “thinking man’s” piece of metal that dares to use other musical texts and celebrates its uniqueness from the vaults of metal releases. FATES WARNING dive into the deep ocean of emotions, pictures, and musical landscapes to collect the best of memories and transform them into songs of passion, doubt and sensation. The usual pictures they transmit the last few years are here too, so nicely re-constructed and re-developed that leave us again relaxed into the middle of a desert staring at the sky, waiting for the nasty hurricane (see cover). Overall a fine release from a band that looks inside out its heart and give us so many disconnected pleasant shades of grey…