FATES WARNING - At the end of a long year

20. November 2020

Fates Warning

FATES WARNING - Am Ende eines langen Jahres

It is the darned 13th studio album and will be released in the darned year 2020: "Long Day Good Night" was anything but an easy birth, this becomes clear in the course of the conversation with Fates-Warning frontman Ray Alder. Since 1987 he has been at the centre of progressive metal - together with songwriter and guitarist Jim Matheos - and has helped to forge some of the gems of the genre. The new 72 minutes long and with 13 songs, which is in keeping with his status, now joins the ranks and convinces not least because of its newly opened doors.

Ray Alder is relaxed. He can be that too. A year of intensive work lies behind him and his band colleagues. Under adverse circumstances (Corona) and with a lot of pressure on the neck, "Long Day Good Night" was created. An album which the likeable musician himself - he admits in the course of the interview - has not heard for months. Nevertheless he knows a lot to tell.

eclipsed: Ray, at the beginning a personal question: Why did you move to Spain?

Ray Alder: Because of my wife. She lived there and had a son. It was too complicated to get her to the US, so we got married and moved here.

eclipsed: Do you speak Spanish?

Alder: Not really. I get by somehow. With my friends here, I speak English. But when I leave the house, of course I have to speak Spanish. Well, and my Spanish is not very good (laughs).

eclipsed: During the strict lockdown in Spain, you recorded the vocals for "Long Day Good Night." At least there was no danger of a lot of distraction ..

Alder: Absolutely not. I was in the studio for two weeks. With a sound engineer. He slept in his apartment above the studio and I slept in the recording room below. You couldn't get out, except to buy groceries. So it was pure concentration. Waking up, singing, working on lyrics. And as soon as a song was finished, Joe Barresi would start mixing it. We were under pressure. And if I got sick or lost my voice, everything would have been messed up. But in the end, it worked.

Fates Warning - Now Comes The Rain (Official Lyric Video)

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