Two members of the pioneering Progressive Metal act, Fates Warning have launched new project North Sea Echoes. Ray Alder and Jim Matheos have joined forces and released lead single “Open Book” from their upcoming debut album Really Good Terrible Things, due out February 23, 2024 via Metal Blade. “Open Book” was also the first song written on Really Good Terrible Things.

Matheos shares:

…with Ray’s lyrics about ending and beginnings, it felt like a good mood to start off with.

Alder adds:

The line ‘we’re a cloud behind the moon’ is referring to the fact that we are all basically an impossibility. Yet here we are. And we will go on until we can’t. I’m speaking of inevitability.

Jeff Wagner, who is the author of the Fates Warning book Destination Onward, writes:

Throughout Really Good Terrible Things, Matheos and Alder serve up the kind of seductive melancholy Fates Warning fans will recognize. Yet there’s a thoroughly different approach here: vocals are delivered with a sort of nostalgic sadness, and the guitar work is layered in such a way as to feel dreamlike. These are rich sonic landscapes, visiting places haunting, beautiful, spectral and secret. The Matheos/Alder partnership is taken to some new and wonderful places here.