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Far my favourite metal vocalist ever. His vocal melodies are absolutely sublime and complement the riffwork on those two
Fates Warning records perfectly. There's actually a genuine sense of melodic interplay between them, and he has such a powerful, passionate delivery that it's hard not to be moved by them. They were an essential part as to why
Fates Warning was (for two years) pretty much the greatest heavy/power/prog metal band ever.
citation :Enigmatick says : Oh, I agree. The only album I've heard and analyzed is Awaken The Guardian (I have The Spectre Within downloaded, it's been on my iPod for a while but haven't listened to it for some reason) and goddamn that shit's good. Every riff if great, there's TONS in every song and they seamlessly flow in to one another. A truly Progressive Metal album, for sure.
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The
Spectre Within is more musically direct and not quite as
Arcane in nature as
Guardian is. It's more
Aggressive, it's more overtly heavy, but it has pretty exactly everything that made the band so fantastic. It's darker in a lot of ways as well, but also achingly beautiful at times. "The Apparition" is possibly one of THE top metal songs of all time, and "Epitaph" is one of the greatest closers in metal history.
Pretty passionate about that band, but I wholeheartedly consider those two records to be pretty much among the pinnacles of metal, period. (though Mercyful Fate's "Don't Break the Oath" and Black Sabbath's
Sabotage are damn near them)
Power Quest and Shaman are also some really great ones. Weird thing is, NoNe of them are from Scandanavia haha. 
