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Certified H00d Classic
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: Bernie Sanders's yacht
Posts: 6,129
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Quote:
I've decided to get in on the Metal Month headbanging fun, though I'll mostly treat it as an opportunity to review stuff I actually love or feel deserves exposure to a wider audience. 
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So...let's begin:
Edge Of Sanity - Crimson II (2003)
Funny thing about Dan Swanö: as great as everything he's done with Edge Of Sanity is, I've heard his solo stuff, collaborations with others and all that jazz...and a lot of it is surprisingly boring, tedious or a combination of the two. It just goes to show you: some of us are meant to deliver pizza, some of us are meant to be leaders of industry, and some of us are meant to only create masterpieces under a single, inseparable moniker in our basements.
And make no mistake: I love death metal and progressive rock whether they are together or separate, but Dan was the first guy to try bringing them together in the early 90's in a coherent dazzling fashion...atleast a year or so in fact before a certain other group that starts with and O and ending with a Peth would try to do the same thing (I love them too, but that's a story for another day).
What I'm trying to get at here is that Dan Swanö is one of the few people in metal since the 80's who can make a legitimate claim to actually doing something completely new and pushing the ball forward in some way, and all you have to do is listen to something like 1992's Unorthodox, 1996's Crimson or its sequel record here to experience the difference firsthand. Huge pummeling production combined with early Dream Theater-esque keyboard runs? An uncommonly organic mix of clean and death vocals that doesn't come off as pandering to one type of audience or the other? Crimson II is a potent, compelling mixture of all these seemingly incompatible elements and yet manages to make it work.
Perhaps the thing I love most about this album is Dan's obsessive attention to detail: even the best classic death metal bands sometimes sacrificed range and dynamics in favor of a relentless energy, but this record homes in on your ears like a carefully guided missile and doesn't overstay its welcome. The keyboard work in particular serves a melodic role that you rarely hear in death metal, and like good classical pieces features a variety of recurring musical motifs (like the circular riff that shows up in 'Incantation' and 'Face To Face').
As a big fan of Dissection, Emperor and their more obscure ilk, I love extreme metal that engages you via multiple sonic avenues. A strong juxtaposition of violence and melodicism is my ideal poison, and for anyone who wants a taste of the same this minor classic gets my highest recommendation. This final release from EoS was pretty much a one-man job too: give credit where credit's due!
Oh, and there's a great complicated comic bookish degenerate sci-fi backstory behind this and the first album from '96, so that's some icing on the cake for anyone who likes a good narrative flow. 
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