Dan Swanö - Moontower (1999)

Ever a favorite of mine and yet an album that was always just out of my reach. I suppose I could have bought it from Black Mark's webstore when I first ganked it from the interwebs some 11-12 years ago, but you know how it is. And then time passes and you just forget. And shit goes hopelessly out of print and dickbags on eBay sell it for ridiculous amounts. Well, fortune smiled upon me a few weeks ago when I found the album at our local metalshop for a cool $10. Mine and finally.

In case you don't know anything, Dan Swanö's one of the most productive and popular Swedish musicians over the past twenty some odd years and has played in a friggin' grocery list of bands as well as a ton 'o collaborations and guestspots. He's also been producing at his studio Unisound since the early 90's and I'm sure he gives the ladies what they want when they want it too.

'Moontower,' released back in '99, is said to be the Edge of Sanity album that Edge of Sanity never recorded. Y'see back in '97 Dan booted himself from the band after recording 'Infernal,' which was an odd album since the song writing styles varied greatly and the band were butting heads at the time and the results were an uneven mixed bag of things. EoS eventually went forward without Dan and recorded 'Cryptic' with Roberth Karlsson as vocalist while Dan began work on 'Moontower,' which feels like the true follow-up to EoS' legendary 'Crimson' album.

Dan once described this album as, "if Rush played death metal in the 70s," which is just a bit off in my estimation. First and foremost, yes, 95% of the vocals are performed in a death metal style, yet the actual instrumentation itself is hardly heavy, plus factor in the synth driven nature of the songs and its pretty hard to really label this as anything more than progressive rock with death metal vocals. Fortunately the synths are really what makes the album such a delight, often times sounding rather technical and complex as well as quite proggy in that vintage 70's tradition and generally just really catchy as well.

Unfortunately the drums and guitars suffer a bit as a result of the abundant synths. The drums are often just buried and absent from the recording while the guitars don't get a whole lot more love either, although some dynamic riffs and really catchy leads can be found (some acoustic bits here and there too), but as always them synths take control in the end.

Under most circumstances I'd probably say this makes the record terrible, but Dan's the man and the guy just knows how to write some fantastic songs. Memorable, emotional, wacky and even dark at times, its a hell of a record to experience. The lyrics are also quite good with each song focusing in on something different.

So, hardly a perfect record in the traditional sense, but then again I've honestly never heard any other record that sounds exactly like this one either. By the that statement alone you should probably consider looking into this one. In the end this is very much a record for prog and Dan fans though and not so much for death metal fans at all. Definitely give it a go no matter your usual tastes, but best of luck finding a physical copy. I've got mine and you cannot have it!!