Released By : Self Released
Genre : Modern Metal
Links : http://www.myspace.com/shadesofgreybelgium
Tracklist
1.Fear My God
2.Strike
3.Critical
4.What’s The Name Of The Game
5.A Killer Within
6.Starve
7.Taste Of Blood
8.Bastard Son
9.Freedom
10.The Reaper
11.Victim Of Despair
12.No One Left
This review is truly hard for me to write and I sincerely hope that regardless of what I say here that some people will still be interested to at least give SHADES OF GREY a listen.
UNTIL THE WORLD IS SICK OF ME is the band’s debut album and is fully self-funded and self-released. This was all I knew about the band upon my first listen, and I do admit that their style which is a bit of mixture of all the different variations of popular modern metal did grab me in places and I came away thinking that the album as a whole wasn’t too bad. This is when I decided to read up some more information and when I discovered that the band had actually been together for a full seven years.
This one single fact was enough for me to really change my outlook on the album. The most obvious thing here is that the songs have obviously been worked on for that whole seven years as this music was way more in demand seven years back, but that leads me to wonder, if these guys truly have been together for seven whole years and have had that much time to refine them and practice them, then why is still a pretty average album. Maybe they’ve had the songs laying around recorded for a few years while they built up the cash to release them, but if that is the fact they should have gone back into the studio (it is relatively affordable these days) and re-cut the tunes, or if not the complete songs at least the vocals.
As I did mention, if this were an album recorded and released by a two year old band it would have fared much better in the ratings department, but as it stands these guys have been around a while now and this sort of output isn’t really acceptable.
The saving grace on the album is the very proficient guitar playing and also the great tone on the guitars and bass. As far as the drums go it all seems a bit basic and bland and unfortunately the vocals really aren’t up to the level they need to be if this band really wants to get somewhere. With their amalgamation of modern metal styles which include Nu Metal, Alt. Metal, Rap Metal and more, obviously their music will be targeted at a very specific niche market as most metal fans have moved away from bands of this style. The problem with catering to a niche market is that unless you are really, really good you probably don’t stand much of a chance. SHADES OF GREY need to go back into the studio and tighten up some of the loose ends here and add some chorus and echo effects on the vocals to disguise the fact that they aren’t sung very well.
Written By ZeeZee
Rating : 5/10
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