[2] Plans for an eleventh Fates Warning studio album were mentioned in September 2009 when vocalist Ray Alder said that the band was working on new material.

[3] In June 2011, guitarist and bandleader Jim Matheos hinted that Fates Warning would not be playing any more shows that year as the band was continuing to work on their new album.

[8] Alder suggested that awareness of the band's previous releases informed the new album: "The idea with Darkness in a Different Light was to do something similar to Parallels, not necessarily musically, but in theory.

[10]The track "O Chloroform" features lyrics by keyboardist Kevin Moore, which were originally left unused from the writing sessions for the 2011 Arch/Matheos album Sympathetic Resonance.

[13] Describing it as "another notch in a long list of accomplishments for Fates Warning", Dan Drago praised the album in About.com for "flawlessly glid[ing] back and forth between complex progressive time signatures and straightforward crushing riffs".

[12] Blabbermouth's Ray Van Horn Jr. suggested a kinship between Darkness in a Different Light and Fates Warning's 1990s output, but also noted an "amplified toughness" that pointed to earlier works such as No Exit (1988).

[14] Joe Devita suggested in Loudwire that Darkness in a Different Light marked Fates Warning's "leap into the modern age" with the band "reinventing themselves while retaining pieces of their hallmark sound".