Edge of Sanity - When All Is Said: The Best of Edge of Sanity (2010)

Seven years after the bands last album and thirteen years since the bands original termination, Black Mark Productions has released, 'When All Is Said,' the final statement from one of Sweden's most revered and influential bands, namely; Edge of Sanity.

This 2CD collection comes housed in a stunning fold out digipak, which features a fantastic booklet that has all lyrics, comments on each song from Dan Swanö, various photos of the band and of course it gathers together songs from each EoS release, which play out in chronological order too.

Disc 1 kicks off with two songs off of the bands '91 debut, 'Nothing But Death Remains' and its interesting to hear EoS during this period since they were more or less a fairly straight forward Swedish Death Metal band with only minor hints of where the music would go on the next album. Continuing from here in '92 with one song from, 'Unorthodox' & two songs from 'The Spectral Sorrows' in '93, both of which introduced the bands trademark fusion of progressive rock and death metal into EoS's music. Two songs from the experimental alternative metal/rock EP, 'Until Eternity Ends' are up next with then two of EoS's most awesome songs from, 'Purgatory Afterglow' in '94. Then comes two songs from '97's, 'Infernal,' which is around the time things within the band started to go wrong and finally another two songs from, 'Cryptic,' which appeared in '97 as well, but it was at this point the band was Swanö-less and as such sound quite different from everything released before hand.

Disc 2 is actually one of the main reasons I wanted to get my hands on this compilation (thanks to my buddy for buying it for me too) and that's because both '96's, 'Crimson' and '03's, 'Crimson II' are here in almost their entirety (minor edits) and I thought, "Hey this will save me the trouble of buying these releases separately." Unfortunately both of these songs, which (Crimson at least) were originally a single forty minute track are instead split up on the second disc and together we have 90 some individual tracks. Personally I think its fine that Crimson II appears in this form since I guess that's how it was, but Crimson wasn't, it was done as a single track to be different at the time so EoS could say, "Look at us we did a single forty minute progressive metal song and we actually made it work, suckas!" I mean its a minor complaint you still get the song, but still it just seems like a bad choice to me.

In the end though this is a perfect collection and introduction for someone that is willing to discover the pure awesomeness that was Edge of Sanity or someone like me who stupidly ignored the band for many years even though he was well aware of their existence. Whatever the case this is worth checking out as it will give you an idea of which EoS release to pick up next. Me? Heck, I'll get my hands on 'em all eventually, but this will keep me going for the moment.