A Nine-Song tarot reading from Uncertainty and Collapse to Renewal, Healing and Chosen Human Connection
Fate Envoy announces the release of The Tower, the Hudson Valley alternative/indie-rock band’s nine-song debut album. Released independently through CD Baby, The Tower is a guitar-driven concept record built around the Major Arcana of the Tarot, tracing a descent through uncertainty, upheaval, isolation, and transformation before arriving at healing and chosen human connection.
Across 35 minutes and 49 seconds, The Tower moves like a Tarot reading. Urgent guitars and cathartic vocals pull from the nervy drive of The Strokes and Arctic Monkeys, the atmospheric depth of Radiohead, and the heaviness of System of a Down, while the songs move between pop-punk immediacy, indie-rock momentum, atmospheric alternative rock, and brooding, mystical hard rock.
What makes the album’s concept distinctive is that the Tarot was not imposed on the songs from the beginning. Much of the material had already been written when band members Eric Anderson and Ari Bayvertyan began laying out the Major Arcana and discovered that nine particular archetypes corresponded remarkably closely with the emotional meaning and sequence of the existing songs. Rather than writing songs to fit predetermined cards, Fate Envoy found a Tarot reading hidden inside the music.
“The Tower became an esoteric unveiling,” the band explains. “The structure was discovered within the material rather than imposed upon it.”
The album opens with “Unforeseen Circumstances,” corresponding to The Moon, and its atmosphere of uncertainty and disorientation. From there, “Lightning” takes on The Hanged Man, exploring suspension and altered perspective, while “Sonny’s Party” embodies The Fool’s reckless leap into experience.
“Grandfather” confronts ancestry, memory, and reckoning through Judgement. The title track, “The Tower,” marks the record’s central rupture, where established structures collapse and hidden truths are exposed. “War Is Hell” takes the role of Death, not as literal annihilation but as the necessary ending of what can no longer continue.
After that collapse, “I Can Barely Talk” retreats into the solitude of The Hermit. “A Moment In Eternity” turns toward The Star, drawing on the restorative power of nature and the cosmos. Finally, “This Dance” closes the album with The Lovers, presented not as idealized romance but as a conscious decision to remain vulnerable, human, and connected after everything else has been stripped away.
The album’s central movement is therefore not simply destruction. It is what comes after.
“The Tower is about what earns survival when familiar but unsustainable structures collapse,” says the band. “It is rock as descent and return, made for anyone who has broken down and come back changed.”
The album’s concept extends beyond the music through The Reading, a 42-page companion document released alongside The Tower. The Reading contains an essay dedicated to each Tarot card, close analysis of the lyrics, and a closing rite for every song. Each track also receives its own unique Tarot card, conceptualised and art-directed by Anderson with original symbolism designed to deepen the listener’s engagement with the album’s progression.
The visual world of The Tower carries the same philosophy. The album cover, created by Anderson’s sister-in-law Ali Selinger, an elementary education art teacher in New York City, depicts characters from all nine Tarot cards interacting with one another in a style inspired by the original Rider-Waite Tarot decks.
Behind the album is a distinctly Hudson Valley story. Fate Envoy is composed of Eric Anderson (vocals, guitar), Ari Bayvertyan (vocals, guitar), Andres Ellis (drums), and Ian Ogana (bass, audio engineering). Anderson, Bayvertyan, and Ellis have played together since early 2021, with most of the material for The Tower written by 2023. Anderson and Bayvertyan wrote the songs and lyrics, while Ellis developed the drum parts and Ogana contributed bass, mixing, and mastering.
The band’s development is also closely connected to Anderson’s work as a high school history teacher and guitar instructor. Anderson runs a school Guitar Club that has played a major role in the band’s growth, with Ogana having originally been one of his students and a member of the club. Fate Envoy opened for Guitar Club concerts four times between 2022 and 2024.
In Spring 2025, Anderson and Bayvertyan built The Forge, the band’s own recording studio, by hand. As the final takes were completed, Ogana mixed and mastered The Tower throughout early 2026.
The result is a debut album that treats alternative rock as both music and inquiry. The Tarot is not decoration or aesthetic costume. It provides a framework for examining crisis, inherited patterns, destruction, solitude, renewal, and the difficult choice to reconnect with other people.
Even the band’s name reflects that purpose. “Fate” suggests the hidden pattern that becomes visible through experience, while an “envoy” is someone who carries a message forward.
With The Tower, Fate Envoy carries that message through nine songs: break down, look deeper, and choose what comes next.
The Tower Tracklist
- Unforeseen Circumstances
- Lightning
- Sonny’s Party
- Grandfather
- The Tower
- War Is Hell
- I Can Barely Talk
- A Moment In Eternity
- This Dance
About Fate Envoy
Fate Envoy is an alternative/indie-rock band from Highland, New York, in the Hudson Valley. Comprised of Eric Anderson, Ari Bayvertyan, Andres Ellis, and Ian Ogana, the band combines urgent guitars and cathartic vocals with influences ranging from The Strokes, Arctic Monkeys, Radiohead, System of a Down, and Interpol. Their debut album, The Tower, uses the Major Arcana of the Tarot as a discovered narrative structure for a story of crisis, transformation, and chosen human connection.
Fate Envoy members:
Eric Anderson, vocals/guitar
Ari Bayvertyan, vocals/guitar
Andres Ellis, drums
Ian Ogana, bass/audio engineer
Release credits belong solely to the four members above.
Find Fate Envoy: Instagram, Facebook, Spotify
For more information, please contact: Danielle Holian | danielle.holian@decentmusicpr.com