?Classic? of metal: FATES WARNING - A Pleasant Shade Of Gray (1997), upon further review

Remember how in my last post about A Pleasant Shade Of Gray I noted being frustrated by the lack of forward momentum, the way I'd want in a concept album?  And I hinted that I'd have a longer discussion about the contrast between proper rock operas that talk in complete sentences, have characters, versus this record offering basically a series of samey poems about rumination?  I was going to quote some typical lyrics, like:

Stare from the darkness

Hear the silence call

Devise divisions;* delay decisions

Watch the hours crawl

Let nothing bleed into nothing, and do nothing

Let nothing bleed into nothing, and do nothing at all

And follow up with a pithy comment like "do nothing, indeed."

Well, you can go ahead and forget about all that.  My stance now is that in its way, Pleasant Shade is absolutely an epic, on equal footing with whatever your other favorite prog-rock/metal records are serving up.

Prog being prog, it was around listen #4 or #5 that I finally got what the record is going for.  Part of being won over was just listening to the music a bunch more and realizing that the bits separate from the obviously great bits were Also Great, Actually.  Turns out that those keyboard passages that drench everything tend towards captivating, worthy of being soaked up and admired.  One is immediately transported to a mood that's reflective in a grandiose sort of way.  Initially I worried that Kevin's compositions would feel to separate from main band, but the keys and sounds actually mingle both frequently and well with the other instruments, creating a tremendous amount of variety.  Some tracks like "Part III" settle into a recognizable metal groove for most of their length and use the atmospherics as haunting counterpoints, while others play as mesmerizingly beautiful music in which rock guitar and piano freely intertwine ("Part VIII" is incredible), and still others fully commit to this sound that's not really metal but not ambient noise either, like the very most melodic, piano-heavy edge possible of industrial music.**  Naturally, with a band this talented, the compositions have enough layers for me to pick up something new every listen through.  Ray is a perfect choice as the voice for this music, very much for the reasons I talked about in the previous post.  Special nod this time around to the rhythm section too, with newly recruited bassist Joey Vera often low-key owning the tracks, and the legendary Mark Zonder showing remarkable willingness to have the drums fade into the background, and supplying quite a lot of other percussion when something like "Part VII" would benefit from it.  Sonically, I guess my main complaint is there's maybe a little more soft-rock than I'd like (think of the "ooh ooh" parts from "Part IV;" it also took me forever to embrace "Part IX" going full-on drippy guitar ballad), but I can live with that as part of a bigger piece.

The other thing that won me over was the same thing initially keeping me at a distance - the lyrics.  Like, sitting down and reading them together with the music.  The instruments and the singer are working together in absolute harmony here, even if one really does need to focus and absorb for that to become clear.  This isn't a big narrative or even much of a story about change.  This is a story about moments.  The narrator isn't just alone ruminating, he's facing this together with someone else.  Time passes with a gray shadow upon them, as they circle around each other without really touching, they gradually recognize just how wide the distance is between them ("and here we are, here we are"), they first refuse to eulogize/apologize/defend but then keep wondering whether things could have or can be different, they spend time apart in body but with inability to do so emotionally, and so on.  Where the Marillions and Dream Theaters of the world have stories for us about lifetimes passing, death (and sometimes murder) after life, and so on, Fates Warning are over here writing literary fiction.  Here we have a (proverbial) book in which nothing actually really happens, but the stuff not happening makes for a pretty universal human story.  

Musical movement can then be conveyed through simple repetition, whether it be the shift to present tense on the second "let nothing..." refrain, or the full-band reframing of the "and I know that..." stanzas from "Part VI" to change the longing from passive to active, or the more introspective tone of "Part X"'s less bombastic repeat of the main figure first introduced in "Part I" (and heard in shorter renditions a few times since) as this cycle through the same old stuff shows hints of leading somewhere new, or, etc., etc.  I'm sure I could keep finding nice little details with each listen, like the way "Part II" doesn't rock quite as much as it could because Ray's verses sound like they're coming from a great distance, across an almost insurmountable barrier.

I did have to let go of wanting Pleasant Shade to be a little faster generally and maybe not repeat itself so often if everything's going to happen so slowly.  I've accepted that this is just not that record, plus the things being repeated are generally great.  The first half of "Part IV" does need to stand in place in wordless silence for awhile to sell the "rain keeping time, measuring out the minutes" and to make it sound good when the track finally loses patience and lashes out.  I do feel the energy flag towards the end, admittedly, and that's despite absolutely loving the direction of the lyrics.  Yes, the "are you listening?" bit from near the beginning should indeed be mirrored near the end by the narrator remembering being unable to be heard, and recognizing his past inability to himself listen.  Yes, the natural ending to this piece is a quiet moment of hope as we embrace not only the rain, but the grayness itself.  Still, I can't help but feel that musically the record is just less a bit interesting after the epic musical catharsis of "Part VIII."  "Part XI" theoretically rocks pretty hard, but couldn't it do something new or in some way be more memorable?  Couldn't "Part XII" have more of a climax before the denouement, going big the way the live version seems to?***  Maybe the last few tracks will just take another few listens to have me as totally hooked as the first three quarters or so.

I'm fine to let Pleasant Shade be one of those pieces that only works when in the right mood and listened to with close attention.  It's not something I'm going to turn on a whim when I want to rock out or call up my particular favorite big chorus; perfectly fine, given that, again, it's clearly not that album.  It's its own thing that I'm increasingly starting to think might just be a masterpiece.

Favorite and least favorite tracks:  N/A; it's one piece of music

Rating:  4.5/5

*Which I heard as "divisive visions" until looking it up

**I mean, if we even count Year Zero-era Nine Inch Nails as "industrial;" that's about the distance we are from the core of that subgenre at this point.

***I didn't spend a huge amount of time with the live version, but just wanted to mention how thrilling the mass singalong of "here we are, here we are" (in "Part VI") is.