The concept behind veteran garage rocker Dan Melchior’s new album title is simple but profound: He doesn’t play the blues, he Plays The Greys, dredging up sounds far too bleary to evoke a primary color. He has every reason to. The North Carolina-based Englishman spent the past several years watching his wife Letha fight for her life before eventually succumbing to cancer.

“Death Don’t Have No Mercy” is accordingly dark and despairing. A six-minute sprawl divided into two distinct halves, it begins with a harrowing dirge that feels like a primitive blues field recording gone music concrete before locking into an electrified blues vamp. Both halves have a meditative effect — first a shapeless daze, then a hypnotic groove. Listen below.

Plays The Greys is out later this month on Ever/Never.