FATES WARNING "A Pleasant Shade Of Gray"
The awaited come back from American prog metal heroes is now reality, and it's really cool to see that the band (who lost bassist Joe DiBiase and guitarist Frank Aresti right before the issue of this album) has gone back to the "Perfect Symmetry" style. This new work consists of only an incredible 55 minutes long suite, divided into twelve sections and written by the leader Jim Matheos in its entirety: the result is brilliant and absolutely anti-commercial, much more than the previous two Fates Warning albums, "Parallels" and "Inside Out", in which the band's tunes were becoming more and more easy to listen to, even if they still mantained a certain class. In "A Pleasant Shade Of Gray" we can hear a lot of experiments, like for example filtered voices, sound effects and, above all, the keyboard work done by ex-Dream Theater Kevin Moore, but you don't have to fear a deep change in Fates' music, because its quality remains extremely high. Besides, the musicians playing on this album have all improved since the beginning of their careers, so what we get is just a great technical abilty and a musical taste which is very hard to find elsewhere. "A Pleasant Shade Of Gray" is therefore a record which deserves all your attention, and I'm quite sure you won't repent to have taken it.
LINE-UP: Ray Alder - vocals Jim Matheos - guitars Joey Vera - bass Mark Zonder - drums Kevin Moore - keyboards (guest musician)
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