UMUR
An Evil Shade of Grey is the debut full-length studio album by Swedish death metal act Cemetary. The album was released in June 1992 by Black Mark Productions. An Evil Shade of Grey was recorded in the legendary Sunlight Studio. The album was produced by Mathias Lodmalm and Thomas Skogsberg.
It didn´t take Cemetary more than a couple of albums to change from a death metal act to a goth metal act ( not unlike the career path of fellow Swedes Tiamat), but on this debut album the style is old school Swedish death metal. The music isn´t as raw and brutal as the music by many other old school Swedish death metal acts but especially the guitar sound on the album is in the trademark sound from those early days of Swedish death metal. The music on the album feature acoustic breaks and keyboard parts too, which gives An Evil Shade of Grey a more melodic touch than many of the albums made by contemporary artists. The musicianship is allright but nothing out of the ordinary. The production is a bit weak to my ears. Especially the guitar sound has a strange sound to it but the drums are pretty weak sounding too. The vocals are raspy/ growling. I´m not the biggest fan of them either.
An Evil Shade of Grey is a pretty standard old school Swedish death metal album and if you ask me it´s even a bit below standard. I miss bite and a 2.5 star rating is therefore warranted.