NORTH SEA ECHOES – How To Cast A Shadow (Album Review)

The many spinoffs Fates Warning has birthed have been nearly as rewarding as Fates Warning itself, with North Sea Echoes holding the distinction of being the brainchild of the two minds who guided Fates through their Pink Floyd era back into heavier territories. Perhaps feeling liberated from the weight of such a daunting legacy, the sophomore outing from North Sea Echoes sees Fates honcho Jim Matheos and longtime Fates singer Ray Alder weaving relatively few elements of their dormant band with the goth rock, new wave, and even synthpop that enamored me before metal found its way into my life.

For the songwriting team that has moved me more than any other to be toying with the music I loved in my pre-metal youth sounds like an experiment that was never supposed to happen, but the more I re-listen to How to Cast a Shadow, the more I find worth appreciating. How to Cast a Shadow begins very much like a Tuesday the Sky record; “A Time of Innocence and Purpose” is a sparse, minimalist soundscape built on clean, damp, and barely audible guitars, interlaced into textures both rich and austere.

The use of synths and electronic drums certainly makes my inner Cause & Effect fanboy happy, especially knowing how unlikely it is that Jim or Ray even know of that Sacramento synthpop duo. This happy coincidence is all the more pleasing for its very singularity: Jim and Ray are trying to be no one other than themselves. They’re simply – and actively – finding new ways to broadcast their inner struggles. It cannot be overstated how heartening it is to see Ray, someone who once reviled the very thought of penning his own lyrics,  intoning such affliction as “I look at you and see nothing/ I turn away, and there you are.” If anything is certain about the Alder/ Matheos pairing, it’s that we can always expect self-examination, regret, and just a microdose of acquiescence.

“Enjoy the View” pairs the paradoxical and the prescient with new-wave-inspired rock, where Ray closes his eyes to do as the title dictates; this song begins with an eerie keyboard motif carried by a very new-wave synthesized bass for the first verse, breaking into heavy (and heavily textured) metallic territory for that anthemic refrain. Verse three threatens to go into more technical Fates territory carried by sublime industrial noise,  but comes right back into that heavy gothic rock. It ain’t exactly Sisters of Mercy, but we neither need nor want North Sea Echoes to try to ape something that’s already been done pretty damn well.

Instead, Jim and Ray seem to be enjoying the liberty of creating deeply personal music without the pressure of their past threatening to subsume them. Let’s be clear: this is not billed as a Fates Warning album because it very deliberately is not intended to sound like Fates Warning, and that very act gives How to Cast a Shadow a sense of levity despite being a dark and brooding album.

Driving that point home is the wistful “Good Enough,” a delicate three-and-a-half-minute ditty that feels like the resolution of a relationship that benefited and fulfilled both parties, but that had reached the end of its course with both partners grieving that end, but grateful to have experienced each other. “I’ll Leave a Light On” follows without hesitation, as though it were a continuation of the song that precedes it, where the narrator expresses second thoughts about the perceived inevitability of this separation.

It also runs a peculiar parallel with a well-loved Fates classic: it sustains thoughtfully textured chords over a heavy rock riff much in the vein of “Firefly,” itself a song that comes to terms with a connection never fully realized. The resemblance is subtle enough to be either coincidental or just a clever Easter egg meant to reward diehards, and this ambiguity is delicious enough to be left alone without further elucidation. “I’ll Leave a Light On” is strong enough to be enjoyed on its own merit anyway.

Curiously, that song is followed by the almost darkwave opening to “All Fall Away,” where a single gently arpeggiated chord dares you to not recall the triads overlain the verses of “The Eleventh Hour.”  The similarities end with that chord though, as the song soon storms into a plenty heavy but barely metal refrain. This brief dance between rock and goth segues into perhaps the most synthpop song on the album, the quite danceable “Revenge.” Despite the decidedly dark lyrics, which include a reference to The Merchant of Venice and an almost imperceptible (and possibly serendipitous) nod to Fates’ Arch era in the line “I’ll wait by the River’s Edge,” “Revenge” does have the potential keep feet shuffling on the goth club’s dance floor, at least right up until Ray has some polyrhythmic counterpoint fun as the song approaches its conclusion. I’m almost certain that technical synthpop exists in this weird world of ours, but this is my first time hearing anything like this, and its execution wisely does not call too much attention to itself.

While “Villains or Saints”  might be the most directly hard rock thing Jim and Ray have ever done together, “What Is and What Was” feels like it could have been on a Tuesday the Sky’s sophomore album had Jim asked Ray to participate. “All That Comes After,” on the other hand, not only sounds like something only these two gentlemen could have created, it also leaves me believing that this could be the sound of Jim and Ray finding another voice. Could it just be a happy accident that it’s also the most radio-friendly song on the album?

Ray saves his most stinging lyrics for the closing title track, appropriately cloaked in the sound we heard on Really Good Terrible Things a few years ago: ethereal, despondent, and sparse, with the resignation in Ray’s voice succinctly inspiring his despair within us: “I always knew you could darken doorways. Still, I let you in. But how can you cast a shadow through a doorway when the light’s gone dim from within?”

How to Cast a Shadow is certainly more a day trip than a journey, but it’s the sort of day trip where the traveler makes new discoveries along a familiar path and views his surroundings through different eyes, or at the very least at least in a different light. Moreover – and this can’t be stressed enough – this second outing from North Sea Echoes is the sound of self-rediscovery, where a partnership in its fifth decade is creating a new avenue for its analysis of the human experience.

Release Date: July 24th, 2026
Record Label: Metal Blade Records
Genre: Post Rock / Alt Rock / Progressive Rock

Musicians:

• Jim Matheos / Guitars, Programming
• Ray Alder / Vocals

How to Cast a Shadow Tracklist:

1. A Time of Innocence and Purpose
2. Enjoy the View
3. Good Enough
4. I’ll Leave a Light On
5. All Fall Away
6. Revenge
7. Villains or Saints
8. What Is And What Was
9. All That Comes After
10. How to Cast a Shadow

Order the album here.