Jim Matheos — born in the United States in 1962 — is Fates Warning's founding guitarist and principal composer, and the only member present throughout the band's entire history since 1982. The architecture of one of the three groups that founded American progressive metal is his, alongside Queensrÿche and Dream Theater. His writing stands out for not depending on virtuosity: Fates Warning's songs have irregular metres, key changes and structures that rarely return to their starting point, but the complexity lies in the form, not in the speed of execution. That method reached its extreme on A Pleasant Shade of Gray (1997), a record consisting of a single composition of about fifty-three minutes divided into twelve parts. It is not a collection of tracks on a shared theme — it is one piece, with material that develops and returns transformed. Few metal bands have attempted such a thing, and fewer still have carried it through. His lyrics follow the same logic: introspection, doubt and loss, instead of the fantasy or mythology that dominated the genre. It is progressive metal on adult subjects. He also maintains side projects, among them OSI with Kevin Moore, former keyboard player of Dream Theater, and Arch/Matheos with John Arch, the band's own first singer.
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