Edge of Sanity - Infernal (1997)

'Infernal' was the final Edge of Sanity recording under the classic line-up of Dan Swanö, Andreas Axelsson, Sami Nerberg, Anders Lindberg and Benny Larsson as rising artistic differences between Dan and Andreas had reached there peak and forced the band apart, but not before they cut one final record with this line-up..., well sort of. The eleven songs feature three different line-up combination's of these five gentlemen plus Peter Tagtgren of Hypocrisy playing lead guitar on, 'The Bleakness of It All' as well as four different guest lyricists with the most notably being Michael Akerfeldt (Opeth) & Jonas Renske (Katatonia).

Musically Infernal is a rough and wild ride of the classic progressive death metal sound that EoS was already known for at this time (Dan wrote these five songs) while some of Axelsson's songs seem to hanker back to the, 'Nothing but Death Remains' days.

Despite all the chaos and for what its worth songs like, 'Hell Is Where the Heart Is' & '15:36' are some of the best songs Dan ever wrote and as I already said its totally classic EoS here while, 'Losing Myself' is one of Dan's entirely clean vocal alternative metal songs, which much like the songs in this vein before them is quite outstanding and catchy. 'The Last Song' is interesting as well since it opens with a melancholic cello & piano duo and despondent lead vocals before diving into a mid-paced and quite stunning instrumental and eventually ambient ending.

The remaining songs are wrote by Axelsson and four of them do feature Dan's hard growling vocals, but are clean vocal and progressively lacking, and as I already said it sounds a lot like the first EoS album. On the other hand, 'Helter Skelter' & 'The Bleakness of It All' are interesting songs since they have a sound that's reminiscent of Marduk's, 'Dark Endless,' which in case you didn't know featured Andreas as the vocalist. Although these songs are not as fast they are still speedy little death metal numbers with black-ish vocals and you know lot's of people have always considered Marduk to be black metal band, but if you go back to this first album and listen you'll see under all the corpsepaint and upside down crosses that musically its very much a death metal album.

In the end, 'Infernal' is a very uneven album, but some truly great songs still do grace it, but if the journey is to weird then just rip all the songs, throw 'em on your mp3 player and enjoy them on a more random basis.

After this album Dan was booted and in the same year Robban Karlsson stepped in to replace him and although I haven't heard, 'Cryptic' yet, I hear its not as bad as some people make it out to be, its just different. In 1999 Dan recorded, 'Moontower' solely, which some people actually consider to be the true ending of EoS. Edge of Sanity then broke up, but as you may know Dan revived it in 2003 and released, 'Crimson II' before finally letting Edge of Sanity rest in peace.

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.

Edge of Sanity - Purgatory Afterglow (1994)

For whatever reason I’ve generally overlooked most everything legendary Swedish musician Dan Swanö has been a part of and if you know anything about Dan, then you know this guy has been in quite a few different bands. Oh sure, I have a few albums from some of the bands he’s done guess work in like Diabolical Masquerade, Katatonia and Bloodbath, but it’s his longer running main bands from the 90’s, Pan.Thy.Monium, Nightingale and of course Edge of Sanity that I have been complete ignorant of despite the fact that I’ve known these bands names for at least a decade now. Well, that all changed a few weeks ago when I found this album at a second hand store for $5 and believe me after hearing this beast I’m going to make sure I hear more Edge of Sanity too.

Anyway, Edge of Sanity was formed in 1989 when Dan was just sixteen years old and for many years it was his most dear project, but by the late 90’s he split from the band, EoS hired Robert Karlsson to do vocals and they created, ‘Cryptic’ together in ’97 and laid the band to rest, while Dan recorded his solo album, ‘Moontower’ in ‘99, which is considered an Edge of Sanity record by some and eventually in ’03, Dan resurrected EoS and recorded, ‘Crimson II’ by himself and let the band again rest in peace.

For those not familiar with EoS, they were truly the first band to fuse Swedish styled death metal with a genuine progressive rock sound. Yes, its true folks, Opeth isn’t as original as we all thought they were. What separates EoS (at least on this release) from Opeth is simply the fact that their music is more Swedish death metal with progressive characteristics while the music that Opeth would eventually create is more progressive music with death metal elements.

The album kicks off with a song called, ‘Twilight,’ which best exemplifies the EoS sound with light ethereal synth passages, both growled, spoken and cleanly sung vocals, melodic guitars with killer riffs/solos and of course the fusion of progressive, ambient and death metal music within this eight minute song. It’s interesting how on various moments of this song (and the album in general) you can feel sentiments of absolute peace while at other times you’ll feel a mad rush of energy with the need to violently bang your head to the music.

However some of the other songs on this record are not as courageous as they lean more towards the classic Swedish death metal sound with plenty of melody and only minor progressive traits. Of course some songs are almost entirely death metal too. There are also two complete oddballs on the album too. ‘Black Tears’ is an insanely catchy melodic metal/hard rock song with a great folky main guitar riff as well as an entirely cleanly sung vocal delivery from Dan on this one. The other weirdo of the album is, ‘Song of the Sirens,’ which isn’t death, progressive or ambient, but rather it’s a short hardcore song, and, well, this is the albums only blunder. I’ll leave it at that.

Throughout this record guitarists Andreas and Sami treat my ears to some of the most memorable riffs and solos I think I’ve ever heard and needless to say it’s these guitars that have kept me coming back for more and more. Anders bass work is a bit buried in the mix, but he’s there if you pay attention and I just love the way drummer Benny switches between blast beats and slower hard rock beats throughout the record. Of course anyone that has heard Dan’s voice knows it’s among the best out there, whether he’s singing cleanly or using his hard growled style.

All in all, in the month that I’ve had this album I’ve played it a lot and intend to continue doing so since it’s absolutely excellent. I also am very much looking forward to purchasing more EoS releases and hearing the bands progression from album to album.

Finally all I can say is if you enjoy bands that fuse death metal with progressive music then look no further than Edge of Sanity as they were the first and surely the best there ever will be.