#9 - John Arch

Okay, so I'm kind of cheating because I already covered Fates Warning and all of John Arch's material since his days in that illustrious band have been in collaboration with Fates' guitarist Jim Matheos.  But please indulge me, as I think his two albums since 1986's Awaken the Guardian, 2003's A Twist of Fate and 2011's Sympathetic Resonance (as Arch/Matheos, and featuring the rest of Fates Warning as well, minus current lead singer Ray Alder), are substantially better than the already terrific three on which he appeared with the band (if maybe not as influential).

A Twist of Fate is one of my favorite albums, even though it's a short one with just two songs clocking in at a total of just about 28 minutes.  As they say, always leave 'em wanting more.  John had been out of music (professional music anyway) for about 17 years when he decided to put together his solo EP.  The first song, "Relentless" is the heavier of the two songs, and the first cowritten by John and Jim since the Fates days.  It's an awesome song and deserves a listen, but I prefer the closer on the EP, "Cheyenne", which features violin along with the standard prog-metal instrumentation of guitar, keys, bass and drums.  In addition to Jim, prodigious chops are on display by Fates' bassist Joey Vera and drummer Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater fame.

And here's a live clip of Fates Warning from 2016, playing a one-gig reunion at Atlanta's Progpower festival, where I believe they played Awaken the Guardian in its entirety in celebration of that album's 30th anniversary.  Would have loved to have gone to that one.  As you can hear, especially if you compare to early Fates Warning live recordings, John's voice and mastery of it are like a fine wine.

#10 - Amorphis

Finnish stalwarts and one of the most accessible bands on the mega-mixed-tape, Amorphis kick off the top 10.  Way back in the early 90s, Amorphis started off as a member of the Finnish arm of the raw and early Swedish Melodic death metal scene.  It didn't take long for them to start tacking on other influences, starting with doom metal, then folk music, then progressive and even pop rock.  I first discovered them thanks to BNR Metal around 1998 or 99.  The recommendation was their third album, Elegy, which was released in 1996, and what a recommendation it was.  The songs are based on Finnish folk poems from the 1840 collection Kanteletar, and the music is clearly composed to suit the subject material, making heavy use of folk melody and cadence.  Elegy offsets the growled vocals of their previous two albums with the cleans of then new vocalist Pasi Koskinen to great effect, complimenting the folky compound meters, pronounced keyboards, occasional traditional instruments and driving rock on one solid offering after another.  Honestly, Elegy is a truly an excellent album, and if you've not given it a spin, I highly encourage it.  Even those who don't like metal can find a lot to like in it.

As great an album as Elegy is (and it IS great), I think I'm one of a small minority of fans who even prefers 2001's Am Universum, which eschews the growled vocals entirely for a uniquely layered progressive rock approach.  The album is wholly listenable, seamlessly merging and blending genres without ever coming across as pretentious, forced or overblown. I'm including the opening track, "Alone", here, whose layered opening and pop rock groove just work fantastically well together.

Koskinen left the band a couple years and one album after Am Universum and was replaced by Tomi Joutsen in 2005.  Losing their distinct vocal sound could have been catastrophic for the band, but they didn't miss a step while returning to their contrasting use of growled and sung vocals, for which Joutsen proved to be the perfect deliverer.  Since then, the band has released a string of seven solid albums featuring their unique blend of melodic death, folk and progressive metal, including Magic & Mayhem, a rearranging and recording of a dozen of their early hits from the first three albums.  Below is a 2010 performance of one of those great songs from Elegy, "My Kantele", performed in Oulu, Finland in support of that release.  It gives a taste of their more recent (as in the last 10 years) sound and live performance, and I hope you enjoy it.

#11 - Cynic

In 1993, tech metal pioneers Cynic released their groundbreaking debut Focus, but it wasn't until five years later that I first heard them.  As with a lot of great music, my friend Chris first introduced me, and as with a lot of forward-thinking music, it took me a while to catch on.  But over the years, I've come to appreciate the album as one of the most important, innovative and influential offerings in the now long and (to me) illustrious history of the metal genre.

Cynic grew out of the burgeoning Florida death metal scene in the late 80's/early 90's which, thanks to them along with fellow bands Death and Atheist, was beginning to be enriched with progressive and jazz elements.  In fact, guitarist Paul Masvidal and drummer Sean Reinert appeared on Death's seminal album Human in 1991.  The band also features my favorite rhythm section of all time in drummer Reinert and bassist Sean Malone who, during Cynic's decade-long hiatus after the release of Focus, also appeared on Aghora's 2000 debut.

A lot of jazz influence can be heard in Cynic's music, with smoothly-phrased, unusually non-modal soloing over chord changes more directional and varied than is typical in metal, syncopated drumming and the warm fretless bass sound.  Also out of character for the Florida scene at the time, Focus featured vocorder-transposed vocals and clean soprano alongside and juxtaposed against the traditional death growls.

Here are two of my favorites from Focus, starting with the closer taken from the album: "How Could I".  It might be the most "metal" song on the album, but it contains plenty of interest.  The intro starts with synthesizer (I don't think it's actually a keyboard, but instead some kind of drum synth) playing a rhythmic pattern, adds a fretless bass counterpoint after a few bars, and then another guitar arpeggiated layer another handful of bars later, growing to the more aggressive and twisty verse at 0:53, which repeats at 1:39 before the chorus at 2:17.  After the chorus, a very jazzy solo break based on the intro opens up at 2:37 before a restatement of the back half of the verse at 2:58 and another chorus at 3:17 before the super cool solo/outro from 3:51 to the fade out.  That outro, to me, feels like an arrival, as though not only the song but the entire album has been building to that final moment of clarity.

And here is a live recording of the band in 2015, playing the opener, entitled "Veil of Maya", from that same album.  It's a terrific performance, but you'll notice that a lot of the backing tracks are piped in, now that the band has reduced in size to the three core members: Paul and the Seans.