A Pleasant Shade of Grey 1997

""A Pleasant Shade of Gray" certainly is a very interesting Fates Warning album. This album is more or less the first step down the pathway of melancholy which characterizes subsequent albums (especially "FWX"), but it does lack the electronic approach of "FWX" and "Disconnected".

"A Pleasant Shade of Gray" is one ambient epic song which contains a lot of interesting parts. Musically it mixes simple Alice-in-Chains-style riffs with more comples FW-like progressive riffs. I guess it is more of an alternative rock/metal-meets-progressive-metal album than a pure progressivemetal album (if the concepts of "Pure" and "progressive" can even be combined).

Outstanding tracks are "Part III", "Part IV" with its beatiful lyrics and vocals, "Part V", which is a more traditional progressive metal track with a lot of quirky stuff in it, the symphonic couplet "Part VII"-"Part VIII", which are simultaneously melancholic and uplifting, and "Part 11" which is probably the heaviest track on the album.

I would recommend this album to fans of progressive metal and also fans of melancholic alternative rock who do not mind a bit of musical and technical acrobatics.

(original review, which was based on my original comment on this release, posted on metalmusicarchives.com)"

"This album is on the mellow side of prog metal. Most of the songs are very emotional (not mentioning the ballads that have a large place here), sometimes even dark and depressive, with all the musicians doing a great job. The technical side is not forgotten, giving a balanced feeling to the 12 compositions. The vocals are outstanding, always between dream and doom..."