UMUR
"An Evil Shade of Grey" is the debut full-length studio album by Swedish death metal act Cemetary. The album was released through Black Mark Production in June 1992. "An Evil Shade of Grey" was recorded in the legendary Sunlight Studio. The album was produced by Mathias Lodmalm and Thomas Skogsberg. Cemetary was founded in 1989 and released a couple of demos before getting signed by Black Mark Production for the release of "An Evil Shade of Grey".
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 features acoustic breaks and keyboard parts too, which provides "An Evil Shade of Grey" with a more melodic touch than many of the albums made by contemporary artists. The musicianship is decent but nothing out of the ordinary. The sound production is a bit weak to my ears. Especially the guitar sound has a strange squeaky sound to it but the drums are pretty weak sounding too. The vocals are raspy/growling. They not delivered in the most convincing manner either.
So upon conclusion "An Evil Shade of Grey" is a pretty standard old school Swedish death metal album and if you ask me it´s honestly a bit below standard. I miss bite, passion, and conviction. A better sounding production, and more memorable songwriting and a 2.5 star (50%) rating is therefore warranted.