Grey - The First Shade Of... (Avantgarde Music, 2005)

 

This French one-man outfit manages to achieve pretty much what the band’s name suggests: there’s nothing really cheerful, optimistic or overly ‘white’ about its sound but then again it doesn’t throw you head first into the Abyss; instead it leaves you in the murkiness and dankness of its audial limbo state. Although not really popular within the nowadays over-saturated Black Metal scene, Grey are not the first of their ilk. Numerous acts such as Xasthur, Leviathan, Nortt and Forgotten Tomb have managed to produce their own good share of suicide-inducing black metal with a doomish vibe. The constituent materials are pretty much simple: take the minimalistic and dissonant elements of good ol’ black and blur them with the hazy and brooding ambience of doom’s most depressing acts. The result is what you might call Black/Doom tracing its roots back to the atmospheric desolation of Burzum’s early and mid catalogue and Darkthrone’s caliginous imagery. Nine tracks are contained within Grey’s debut, all of which comprise of doomesque musical interlayers ardently wrapped around their more than conspicuous black metal backbone. So as you might’ve guessed don’t expect your blast beat, tremolo riffing extravaganza; the album’s aim is not to give you a sore neckline but rather to act as an audial accompaniment to a deep contemplative (suicidal even?) reverie. But the album unfortunately falls short in its intended outcome although adept and satisfactory both technically and production-wise. Be it the loathed drum machine (although hardly distinct at times), the unneeded at many a time tempo waverings or the abundant exceedingly stretched musical passages within certain tracks which attenuate the whole effect, when the album hits the finish mark it leaves you craving for more as if shutting the window to its self-created abyss too prematurely. Nonetheless this is an album that although not necessarily standing out of the crowd is an appeasing and worthy effort.

(originally written for Tartarean Desire - 8/8/2005)