Crimson II [2CD Reissue]

Edge Of Sanity - Crimson II [2CD Reissue]

The follow-up to Unorthodox might've never happened had Edge of Sanity not feared legal peril from Black Mark. In the band's eyes, they had delivered a ''perfect death metal'' album, and there was nowhere to go. They went into a brief, semi-imposed exile-until Boss called. Emerging unscathed, they did the unthinkable. Instead of doubling down on Unorthodox, Edge of Sanity-primarily songwriters Swano and Dread-went into the wild, thinking that their dabbling in gothic rock, heavy metal covers, and clean vocals would effectively end their career. The Spectral Sorrows did the opposite. It sold and sold. There was a blink of an eye when the group opted to return to their roots, but Boss squashed that idea again. So, Edge of Sanity went into writing mode, delivering the stopgap EP, Until Eternity Ends, and album Purgatory Afterglow. The EP proved to be a masterstroke setup. Lead-off track ''Until Eternity Ends'' paired expertly with ''Invisible Sun'', a cover of The Police's 1981 hit. Encouraged to be different, Edge of Sanity went all in. If 1994 was a transitional year for death metal, Purgatory Afterglow was at the forefront, and ''Black Tears'' and ''Twilight'' were the vanguard. Edge of Sanity weren't finished upending established norms. While the genre had largely moved on from by-the-numbers emanations, the industry was immovable from singles and radio/video play. Somehow, Boss bought into the idea of a single 40-minute song called ''Crimson''. If the group had succeeded on the merits of musical oddities, then Crimson, the album, would be the roll-up of every risk and reward before it. Against the grain yet again, Crimson was deemed by fans and press alike as a masterpiece in 1996. Edge of Sanity's greatest strength was its greatness weaknesses: the members were always moving in different directions musically. Thus far, this disparate motion had worked to their advantage, but with the follow-up to Crimson in view, divisions and subdivisions came into play-Swano at one end, the rest (largely Dread and Larsson) at the other. When Infernal landed in 1997, nobody knew there were two different bands behind the scenes, but on the album, it sounded disconnected and not in Edge of Sanity's usual way. The fact that Nerberg was offline also didn't help matters.