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Fates Warning: Parallels




When the Fall 1991 quarter/semester began, a one-two punch forever changed rock music. The first was Metallica's disappointing eponymous album. After four killer albums, Metallica gave us...this?!

The second, of course, was the grunge scourge, lead by Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

Rock acts had no idea that these two earthquakes would alter the landscape, make it all but impossible, unless you were grunge and/or rap. Nevertheless, for us rock audiophiles, the Fall '91 semester produced three must-have, landmark albums. The first was in the thrash vein, Overkill's Horrorscope. The second was in the Broadway rock vein, Savatage's Streets: A Rock Opera. And the third was in the straight-ahead prog rock vein, Fates Warning's Parallels.

People used to, for example, Queensryche's Empire were in good position to absorb and like Fates Warning's Parallels. Indeed, lead singer Ray Alder sometimes sounds like Queensryche's Geoff Tate. And in turn, Parallels' intelligent brand of prog rock would set the table for their friends, Dream Theater.

During the Winter 1992 quarter, I listened extensively to Parallels. Yeah, yeah, I should have been doing my school work. But the intelligent rock of Parallels made me frustrated with the mid-fi we college students had. We simply could not afford high-end audio products. I pressed on, and while listening to Parallels, I became enamored (some say obsessed) with an Audio Alchemy 2-chassis CD transport; Theta DS Pro Prime; Conrad-Johnson PF-1; Thiel CS1.2; XLO Reference interconnects; and the PAC IDOS. Yes, on Valentine's Day 1992, I was listening to Parallels, while my friend ACS made her way from UC Berkeley to my college apartment at UC Santa Cruz.

A few years later, when I reconnected with ACS, we would take Fates Warning's Parallels to audio stores, shows, gatherings, and parties. Because ACS was larger-than-life, and because no one else played prog rock, some of you claim to have seen, overheard, or crossed paths with me and ACS. All that time, while thoroughly enjoying Parallels, I extolled (but never proselytized) its virtues, called it a must-have.

You know what? Parallels is interesting, in that I personally know no one who has it on LP or cassette. Everyone I know has it on CD. While I am not at liberty to comment on the LP and cassette, I can tell you that the Parallels CD is "ahead of its time," in that it is compressed to death. It has zero dynamics. In that sense, it sounds like today's recordings.

Well, well, well. In the face of historically poor sales, someone had the wherewithal in 2010 to reissue Parallels as a deluxe version. Sigh, it comes in a ridiculously poor and weak cardboard multi-fold digipak. The deluxe version adds a second audio CD, which includes some live songs and pre-production demos. It also includes a bonus DVD, consisting of the making of Parallels, two videos, and footage of the live tracks.

But more importantly, the Parallels album itself has been redone. And it turns out that the original recording is not as compressed as we had assumed for almost 20 years. The recording actually is not monophonic. There's actually transparency, along with contrast between music and background silence. There actually are texture, timbre, and ring to the cymbals.

The original 1991 CD of Parallels was a must-have, required listening for any rock fan worth his or her salt [thinking about sweat and stuff down there, the sports-playing ACS hated that expression]. If that is the case, then we rock audiophiles now have no excuse. We absolutely have to have the 2010 deluxe version of Parallels.

The Audiophiles' DJ,
-Lummy The Loch Monster


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Topic - Fates Warning: Parallels - Luminator 20:58:45 01/18/15 (2)

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