A Pleasant Shade of Gray A Pleasant Shade of Gray A Pleasant Shade of Gray is a concept album by the progressive metal group Fates Warning, released in 1997. It contains one song divided into twelve parts and is noted for its darker mood and more progressive style. "A Pleasant Shade Of Gray" is a single song that is divided into twelve tracks. The album is notable for its darker mood and mixture of progressive rock and metal with hints of industrial, classical, and psychedelia. Jim Matheos wrote the album following Fates Warning's 1994 tour in support of "Inside Out", with Matheos mailing tapes to
Pale Fire novel", and the critic Harold Bloom called it "the surest demonstration of his own genius ... that remarkable tour de force". It was ranked 53rd on the list of the Modern Library 100 Best Novels and 1st on the American literary critic Larry McCaffery's . Starting with the epigraph and table of contents, "Pale Fire" looks like the publication of a 999-line poem in four cantos ("Pale Fire") by the fictional John Shade with a foreword, extensive commentary, and index by his self-appointed editor, Charles Kinbote. Kinbote's commentary takes the form of notes to various numbered lines of the poem.