Jim Matheos formed Fates Warning with original bassist Joe Dibiase nearly fifteen years ago in their home state of Connecticut. Since then the band has released eight albums, of which the new A Pleasant Shade Of Gray is emphatically the most ambitious - no mean accolade for a band which has always tended to push the boundaries.

Indeed they have. A Pleasant Shade Of Gray is one continuous CD length performance fully indulging the band's dual penchants for expansive progressive rock and mellower, darker moods as well, yielding the most ambitious record yet in a career rarely characterized by restraint. The work was crafted over a period of a year, with writer Matheos mailing tapes from his New Hampshire home to vocalist Ray Alder and drummer Mark Zonder in Los Angeles. Astonishingly the players were able to master the intricacies of Matheos' creation long distance, with the record being completed after two weeks of live rehearsals and a month in the Carriage House studio (where they had made one of their pinnacle records Perfect Symmetry) with returning producer Terry Brown. All of this included the the time it took to integrate two guest musicians, former Armored Saint bassist Joey Vera and ex-Dream Theater keyboard player Kevin Moore, the latter drafted in to augment the progressive flavor of the record by taking over some of the parts normally allocated to guitar.

The genesis of the Terry Brown/Fates Warning relationship can be traced back two records to the acclaimed Parallels in 1991. Parallels marked the band's most coherent attempt to make progressive metal both concise and accessible. This was aided by the producticn talent of Terry Brown who had honed his skills by workmg an countless Rush albums. Buoyed by Parallels' support in the media and amongst their dedicated fans, Fates Warning went back into the studio to record Inside Out, a similarly concise album produced by Bill Metoyer. The record continued the group's progressive journey in a vein similar to the singles oriented Parallels.

"I think all of our records have been drastically different with the exception of Inside Out and Parallels" Matheos notes, "And looking back that might not have been such a good move. We repeated ourselves and when we stepped away from it at the end of touring with it we weren't pleased with that; so this time we've done something radically different."

Matheos, who wrote all of the lyrics as well as the music is happy to discuss the latter but balks at clarifying the former, preferring to leave the discerning listener to reach his or her own understanding of exactly what A Pleasant Shade Of Gray is all about. "I don't have anything to say on the lyrics," he demurs "I'll only regret trying to encapsulate in a few sentences what took a year to write and an hour to get across."

That latter aspect clearly has a bearing on how the band touring is going to be handled. After much internal debate the piece was not divided up into subtitled movements; a compromise sees it punctuated into twelve sections on the CD, so favorite moments can be returned to, but the intention is to perform the whole piece from beginning to end on stage without interruption or omission. In the event that an opening slot on a major tour is offered then this resolution will clearly have to be reconsidered, but Fates Warning intends to do it's collective best to maintain the integrity of what is a very special record indeed.

METAL BLADE RECORDS INC.