Album Review: A-Z - A-Z

Fates Warning appears to have put things to bed, but the past and present members of the band are as busy as ever doing other things. It's a bit unusual for a band to have run its course, but not because the people are done with music entirely. Retiring is easy to understand, but stepping away from one band to pursue others is a more unique state of affairs, and I'm not sure how often I have come across it.

For this new group, this would entail Ray Alder and Mark Zonder, who reunite in this new group that aims to be more straight-forward, and less obtuse, than their origin. In that sense, the better comparison will not be between this band and Fates Warning, but rather Ray Alder's solo album, "What The Water Wants", which set the bar extremely high for these spin-off projects.

The biggest difference is that for perhaps the first time, these guys are playing music with some energy and vigor to it. The usual morose mood of Fates Warning is gone, replaced with more of a traditional rock spirit. It's a bit weird, after all these years, to hear Ray singing music that isn't clouded with a layer of melancholy. His voice evolved into being a perfect fit for that tone, which makes it a bit of an adjustment to hear him in this new setting. It does, however, illustrate that at least in the studio, he is still a remarkable singer.

With Zonder as the impetus of the band, the songs are an odd mashup of lead drums and lead vocals. The guitars almost fade into the background in places, as the focus is almost entirely on Zonder and Alder. Building melodies atop rhythms is a difficult task, and it's one that even when successful doesn't always yield the best results. I'll be honest and say the drums are the absolute last thing I listen to in a song, so having Zonder's drums leading the way so often is not something I am very fond of. My mind doesn't think in rhythm, but in melody, so every collection of odd hits and fills doesn't nothing for me. Especially when they sound so synthetic and 80s as they do in "The Far Side Of The Horizon", I'm zoning out.

Ray does a wonderful job of pulling the songs up, giving them more melody than nearly anything he has ever done. Between the runs of notes his picks, and the lush layers of vocals he stacks up in the choruses, his voice dominates the record. It is, in some ways, as if someone took his solo album from the shadows and into the light. The melodic ear is the same, and far outpaces anything he ever did with Fates Warning (sorry, but it's true). The question is whether you prefer the fog when it is thick, or when it has burned off.

Personally, I connect more with the angst and anguish of Ray's darker side. A-Z isn't as beautiful a sound as what Ray did on his own, and it doesn't quite have the pep and power to be the hard rock band they might have set out to create. The elements of Fates Warning's history still can be heard in these songs, and it's the ebb and flow between those and the more straight-forward rock that keep things from ever finding their momentum. It's hard to tell if the band is trying to simply be a slightly more fun Fates Warning, or if they are falling short of being a good-time rock band. Either way, they exist in a middle ground that doesn't satisfy either end quite enough.

That's just my perspective, though. I'm sure plenty of people will love the complicated drum parts, and will find the band a perfect blend of light and dark. I can only say how I hear this music, and I am approaching it from a far different angle than the band did. I'm sure they love the results, and I'm not going to say they haven't done this well, but it simply doesn't speak to me the way I want a record to.