EDGE OF SANITY – Crimson

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9.0

• Bands:
  EDGE OF SANITY
• Duration: 00:40:00
• Available from: 04/02/1996
• Label:

• Black Mark

In 1996, Edge Of Sanity decided to definitively challenge themselves and their audience with “Crimson”, a work that transformed their already proverbial ambition into method and redefines what their death metal can become. A work out of time, which challenges the traditional song form and presents itself as a forty-minute suite, yet capable of maintaining a surprising accessibility. This is the paradox – or perhaps the secret – of the vision of frontman and main composer Dan Swanö: knowing how to keep together the wildest ambition and the most natural melodic instinct, without ever sacrificing too much the impact of the reference genre. “Crimson” was born like this, as a manifesto of its author's adventurous soul, but also of his surprising almost pop sensitivity, of his attention to musicality and memorability.

In addition to formal and sonic audacity, “Crimson” rests on a surprisingly structured concept: the story imagines a future in which humanity, having suddenly become infertile, is now close to extinction. In this desperate scenario, the king and queen miraculously manage to generate a daughter: a unique event, which transforms the newborn into the last bastion of hope for mankind. But the tragedy is far from averted. Orphaned after her father's assassination and the rise of a usurper, the princess chooses to resort to forbidden magical practices in order to regain the throne. She will do it, but at the price of becoming a tyrant herself, a slave to the dark forces that allowed her to win. The narrative paradox – the savior who becomes the oppressor – finally leads to a new rebellion, this time against her. It is a circular tale, steeped in tragedy and moral ambiguity, which reflects well the multifaceted nature of music: an epic journey in which hope and decadence coexist, just like the different sound registers that Swanö weaves throughout the suite.

The album arrives after a sequence of works in which Edge Of Sanity have progressively expanded the boundaries of their own language. “Purgatory Afterglow” is the most immediate reference, not only for the success achieved, but also for the way in which it had already made clear the group's desire to contaminate, experiment, dare. No less important, to understand “Crimson”, are some intuitions scattered between “Unorthodox” and “The Spectral Sorrows”, two albums in which the first forays into a vague prog vein, into keyboards, acoustic passages and more airy openings gave a glimpse of still unexpressed possibilities. With “Crimson”, all this material flows into a single, enormous room structure, where each element is promptly recovered, reassembled and refined.

At first, tackling a single forty-minute track may seem like a complex undertaking: up to that point, death metal isn't exactly the most practiced territory for such vast, narrative excursions, and the temptation to approach the album with distrust is quite understandable. Yet the strength of the album lies precisely in the balance that Swanö manages to establish between exploration and form. From the first minutes all the main ingredients of the recipe are presented: the death metal backbone, with sharp riffs and an aggression that in some passages does not give up some black metal hints; atmospheric keyboards; the acoustic guitars placed to mark crucial junctions; the clean vocal lines; a melodic tension that never explodes in conventional refrains, but which constantly insinuates itself into the arrangements. It is almost as if Swanö, before leading the listener into the structural labyrinth of the suite, provided him with a general map, a glossary of the elements that will return during the journey.

The fundamental point is precisely this: “Crimson” does not continue through unstoppable accumulation, it is not a spiral in which each room introduces a new one, different and disconnected from the previous one. On the contrary, the initial material becomes a plot continually reworked, recontextualized, sometimes slightly modulated, sometimes completely relaunched with rhythmic or harmonic variations. The parts refer to each other, respond to each other at a distance, fit together with an internal logic that is almost narrative. The effect is not that of an uncontrolled “stream of consciousness”, nor an excessively complacent exercise in style: “Crimson” instead seems conceived to be remembered, to sculpt some melodic and thematic points in the listener's memory in a natural, almost hidden way. Swanö's ear, his passion for structures formally closer to the song form than to cerebral prog rock, ensures that even in the most extensive and demanding context of the suite a sense of familiarity emerges.

Of course, there is a choral section, after the half hour mark, in which Swanö and his companions take more space to slow down, rarefy, introduce an almost suspended atmosphere. It is the only real moment of break with the initial presentation, but here too the controlled minimalism serves the general discussion: a breath, an intermediate illumination, a passage that prepares the relaunch of the subsequent themes and crescendos. The ability to balance tension and release, aggression and lyricism, is one of the great qualities of the album: “Crimson” moves like a long and constant wave, an up and down where every peak and every pause are calculated with a measure that never becomes rigid. The flow is natural, spontaneous, because Swanö's mentality is: open, curious, but never pompous, never intent on proving something at all costs.

The contribution of Mikael Åkerfeldt, called upon to provide the screaming in the most ferocious parts, adds another important nuance. It is curious that Swanö decided to entrust him with the most extreme sections, considering Åkerfeldt's skill in clean. But the choice works perfectly: the guest voice does not disturb, on the contrary it integrates into the narrative fabric of the suite, underlining some of its most ferocious and dramatic sections. However, Swanö remains an extraordinary singer – a characteristic that is sometimes underestimated – and the continuous exchange between growl, scream and clean parts, on various registers, contributes to making the composition even more dynamic.

The result is a work that flows with surprising agility: the forty minutes pass without us realizing their duration, thanks to that underground melodic tension that ties everything together and that way of taking up the themes without redundancy. “Crimson” proves that you can aspire to an expanded format without losing identity or rhythm, as long as the writing is solid enough to support the scaffolding.

Thirty years after its release, it remains an album often cited, plundered here and there, but rarely celebrated as it deserves among the general metal public. Yet, its importance is notable: not only for what it represents in Edge Of Sanity's career, but for the impact it had on the very concept of progressive or even just contaminated death metal. Remembering this, every now and then, is a necessary action. With “Crimson”, Swanö and his companions have demonstrated and continue to demonstrate that contamination can be a virtue, that a minimum of courage can coexist with immediacy, that complexity can be emotional and not just technical. A lesson that, even today, many pursue without fully capturing its essence.