CRIMSON

An absolutely classic death metal record! Edge of Sanity, "Crimson" is a masterpiece of music and one of the best highlights of the whole melodic death metal scene in Sweden and the surrounding Scandinavian countries. "Crimson" is a 40 minute epic tune that is full off savage riffery, death grunt vocals and a mixture of different themes.

I am a diehard progger, yet even I find it difficult to listen to a song over 30 minutes long. Dream Theater's "Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence", Fantomas "Delirium Cordia", Mike Oldfields "Tubular Bells" and Green Carnations "Light of Day, Day of Darkness" are all good examples of challenging 30+ minute epic prog tunes. They are good but difficult to dig into. "Crimson" however is one proggy adventure that I find easy to listen to over and over again and it wasn't really a struggle to take it all in. This epic project seems to be pretty much free of filler, boring passages and repetition. I am always excited by what I am hearing.

"Crimson" was written by Dan Swano in the bulk, and his bleak vocals and lyrics tell as epic a tale as the music on this album does. Our old prog metal friend, Mikael Akerfeldt appears on this album to provide some clean vocals, guitar and even a piano solo. At this time Dan Swano and Mikael Akerfeldt were used to working together as Dan Swano had produced Opeth's first two albums, "Orchid" and "Morningrise". If anyone has heard those album then they will recognise an similar production and atmosphere on "Crimson" to those albums.

"Crimson" is mostly built up of melodic death metal that seems to favour some quite bulky and chuggy riffs often propelled by blastbeating drums, though there is a good mixture between different tempo's to make sure this piece isn't too nausiating. There are occasionaly mythological and folksy influences in the lyrics and themes of this album. One of the best riffs on the album is the famous galloping medieval style riff that first comes in around a third of the way through the album.

This is a true epic and one i would gladly label prog metal. It kicks in straight away and keeps the listening hooked on through the whole thing. I highly recommend this to any Opeth and Katatonia fan on the site, as well as those fans of the scandinavian metal scene as this is one of the best albums to be produced from that side of europe.