DISCONNECTED

So here is it, Fates Warning's 9th studio release, Disconnected published in 2000 after their stunning masterpiece A Pleasant Shade of Grey that finally restored Fates Warning's position in the progressive world. After Kevin Moore became a member of Fates Warning and worked with them on A Pleasant Shade of Grey, he stayed and helped them here once again. Unfortunately he left after Disconnected. But he left his mark, for example the unusual track lengths, So with 8 minutes, Something from Nothing with 11 minutes and Still Remains with 16 minutes.

The album starts with the first part of the title track Disconnected. A nice expressive guitar bend and finally a voice that tells you that you are disconnected! Track 2, One, is a typical Fates Warning song, as well as the next 3 tracks, starting with a heavy guitar riff, getting louder and with a bass and a great drum work by Mark Zonder, joining and Ray Alder's typical ascending and descending vocals. Here you first notice some of the effects used on the whole album, e.g. in the first verse. They continue in the next songs as well, giving them a spacey character. Still Remains is on the one hand the longest and on the other hand the best song of this album. It starts with some effects and 2 echoing guitar tones, one sounds like a water drop falling down in a cave. The two tones develop to 4 notes at all, sounding much more like a guitar and louder now. The first verse begins with some added synthesizer and some screams of a man. The next part begins now with every instrument and harder now. Sounds like typical Fates Warning now again, except the synthesizer-melody besides. A guitar solo follows. This is the first time Jim Matheos is playing a solo - a nice addition to the otherwise, monotone guitar work on this album. There are some riffs, powerchords and arpeggios but nothing really stunning! A piano is added and a nice bass interlude follows. Soon afterwards the next verse begins. The song continues almost the same, always varied of course. At the end a guitar solo follows. This is the first time Jim Matheos is playing a solo - a nice addition to the otherwise, monotone guitar work on this album. There are some riffs, powerchords and arpeggios but nothing really stunning! The second part of the title track, Disconnected is much longer than the first one (6 minutes). It starts with the same guitar bend, but there is a lot more going on in this song. There are additional synthesizer and a further piano. All in all a really, really sad and touching instrumental.

So this is a nice album, I think every Fates Warning fan will like it and some who like Dream Theater or other progressive metal bands could try this album. While songs like Still Remains and Disconnected II are great songs and definitely worth a listening, the whole album cannot really is nothing special, but still a quite good album!