| Nothing But Death Remains | 1991 |
| Unorthodox | 1992 |
| Spectral Sorrows | 1993 |
| Purgatory Afterglow | 1994 |
| Until Eternity Ends | 1995 |
| Crimson | 1996 |
| Infernal | 1997 |
| Cryptic | 1997 |
| Evolution (compilation) | 2000 |
I'm not all that big of a death metal fan, but Sweden's Edge of Sanity are one of the two bands in this genre (the other being Paramaecium) who have truly impressed me. Their style was epic and melodic, especially on the '94 and '96 releases. As far a the band members go, two stand out to me. Band leader Dan Swano is one of the most respected people in death metal, and for good reasons too. He was a fantastic songwriter, excellent guitarist, and the best death metal vocalist ever. His vocal effects weren't as extreme as Andrew Tompkins' of Paramaecium are, but he could sing better, combining a powerful distorted voice with equally stunning clean vocals. The other band member I think is worth a special mention would be drummer Benny Larsson who had both talent for fast rolls and using the drums as a tool to bridge song sections and enhance the mood a little.
There were three other guitarists (Mikael Akerfeldt, Andreas Axelsson, and Sami Nerberg), and they were pretty good too. And bassist Anders Lindberg, while nothing special, was a competent musician. Edge Of Sanity have broken up and are most remembered for their album Crimson, which was a single forty-minute long song, although any of the full-length albums I have reviewed here are certainly worth a listen.
--Robert Grazer
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(reviewed by Robert Grazer)
HIGH POINTS: Tales... LOW POINTS: Human Abberation, Angel Of Distress, Decepted By The Cross, Immortal Souls.
You blink your eye and it's gone. Just over thirty minutes long, and most of it isn't great. I mean, come on Dan Swano was only seventeen at the time, he wasn't going to pump out a masterpiece like Purgatory Afterglow at this age. This is, more or less, your typical death metal album, the only interesting track being the opening "Tales..." with some synthesized sounds in there and six minutes of music that can keep you interest. Other than that "The Dead" is alright, I guess, but beyond that they all sound the same, with your typical silly death metal subject matter. If anyone ever wants to criticize Edge Of Sanity for falling into the "death metal is evil" stereotype, this is certainly the place to look.
There are some other things that you might find somewhat enjoyable here. The guitar sound is good, although nowhere near as good as they'd eventually get it. Edge Of Sanity albums never has really great sound even in the later days, but the overall mix on Nothing But Death Remains is the only one that is laughably bad. The growls are just your normal death shouts, and no clean vocals at all. Only the drums are doing something interesting, but good drum work comes with nearly all death metal. It's the great drumming of later releases that makes me think highly of Benny. So overall this is just a bunch of songs by some kids that wanted to make evil music. How they managed to grow up and release the incredible Crimson just a five years later I'll never know.
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(reviewed by Robert Grazer)
HIGH POINTS: When All Is Said Enigma, Requiscon By Page. LOW POINTS: The Day Of Maturity, A Curfew For The Damned, After Afterlife, Nocturnal.
A step up, but that sure isn't saying too much. Not that it doesn't mean anything at all. No, Unorthodox is on a level that most death metal bands can't dream of reaching. That doesn't make it good, though. Just improved. There are a whole lot more good moments on this album than the last one, even a few really good songs (the epic "Enigma" which actually shows the band trying to do something interesting, from the strings to the speed and so on. It kind of reminds me of some stuff from the next album. And the acoustic instrumental "Requiscon By Page" is pretty, and the closing "When All is Said" is a fantastic melodic song. the best on the album). The production is a step up as well (but still not great), and overall the feel of the album isn't quite as bad, even though a lot of the songs are kind of boring. But at least things are more interesting than they were before. Everything form the guitar sound to Dan's vocals, which were decent on Nothing But Death Remains, is stepped up some. And the songs are even starting to sound like someone wrote them.
And that still doesn't mean we can't call this your average good but typical death metal release. The album does too caught up in just being fast for the hell of it. And the song titles are one area that has actually gotten worse from the first album ("A Curfew For the Damned" and "Dead But Dreaming" are just a couple examples), and they're still trying to be scary evil death metal guys. It's things like this that make me think I rated The Spectral Sorrows (which is plenty better than this, and maybe even better than I gave it credit for) too low. That was developed melodic death metal. This is not.
I know some people that go as far to call Unorthodox a masterpiece. I wouldn't, especially when we're talking about Edge Of Sanity. It's got a lot of neat things to it, better riffs and bells and such, but that's not enough for me. Sure it makes it neat, but while I'm off praising all of the improved aspects of the album I haven't mentioned that several of the songs ("The Day Of Maturity" and "A Curfew For The Damned") are no better than the crap on the debut. I guess I'm just trying to say that this is far from a good album, despite how much I've praised it. It's still good to see a band improve this much from release to release. Say, if they keep this up they might be even be able to make the best death metal album ever. Oh, wait a minute...
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(reviewed by Robert Grazer)
HIGH POINTS: The Masque, A Serenade for the Dead, Blood of My Enemies, Lost. LOW POINTS: Feedin' The Charlatan, Livin' Hell, Jesus Cries.
Edge of Sanity still hadn't fully developed their style at this point. Spectral Sorrows is a good listen, but just doesn't give me all I want in a death metal album. It's too focused on the speed and not the mood, riffs, and melodies. The opening instrumental title track that introduces "Darkday" is one of the few places where a real mood can be found. "Darkday" itself has a nice riff, but most of the time it's too buried by the fast pace of the song, and there are only a couple of places (mostly toward the end) where it can be fully enjoyed. The same goes for the following "Livin' Hell." There are some nice moments in the regular old speed/death metal, but there are only a couple and they are not very long. "Lost" is slower and more focused on the quality music and has as short and wonderful guitar solo in it, and there's also a great guitar solo in the beginning of "The Masque," which follows. "The Masque" is the first truly great song on here because when it begins up with all of the fast stuff it never strays from the actual melody, when it slows down it builds an effective atmosphere, and it all builds up to quite a powerful ending -- this song is good enough to have been on Purgatory Afterglow.
A cover of Manowar's "Blood of My Enemies" features clean vocals, but since I have never heard the original I can't really compare the two. I can however say that this version works very well to become a highlight on the album. "Jesus Cries" begins expertly, moving at a perfect pace with all sorts of different vocal effects and a great chorus. Sadly, the last minute of the song cuts out all of the musical glory and just becomes sick and dark for the sake of being sick and dark, and in the process ruins the song. The next two are "Across the Fields of Forever" and "On the Other Side," each one excellent, showing the better side of the band.
"Sacrificed" shows the band's future style, the melodic riff based death metal, and it's almost a musical prequel to "Black Tears." The background vocals on the chorus take a bit of time to get used to, and I still think it drags the song down a bit. "Waiting To Die" has nothing good to offer, and "Feedin' The Charlatan" is pathetic, just ridiculous shouting in front of pathetic guitar noise. "Charlatan" is by far the worst song on the album. Closing the album is "A Serenade For The Dead," another instrumental, and quite a pretty one at that. The piano provides a fitting end to Spectral Sorrows. They're moving in the correct direction, but their sound still hasn't matured beyond just an above average death metal album.
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(reviewed by Robert Grazer)
HIGH POINTS: Velvet Dreams, Twilight, Black Tears, Of Darksome Origin, Elegy. LOW POINTS: Song of Sirens
Getting closer to true glory. Edge Of Sanity continue to build up their sound to the point of making Purgatory Afterglow a near-classic. This album starts out awesome with "Twilight," a melodic doom song built on two of the greatest riffs of all time. In the middle is a soft section with clean vocals that builds up a great mood before going right back into the chorus. It's a classic doom song, better than anything on Spectral Sorrows. For the first time EoS are able to combine speed and melody in a close to perfect way with the following track, "Of Darksome Origin," which also features some quite high pitched screwed up screamsto enhance the overall atmosphere of this great song. Next some excellent clean vocals appear on the verses of "Blood-Colored," and on "Silent" we get some pure speed death metal done the way it should be, with an awesome guitar solo and a hilarious little "Uh" noise toward the end.
The riffs and clean vocals take over again in the powerful "Black Tears," a song I used to get annoyed by, saying the riffs were too much like the ones in "Twilight," but now I see that I was wrong. Another great speed track comes up after "Black Tears." "Elegy" is propelled by great guitar work and terrific melodies, and moves at a well executed fast pace for the first couple of minutes, before cooling down and then starting back up again. The slower moving classic "Velvet Dreams" has a bunch of beautiful melodies in it accompanied by lots of heavy rocking and an emotional chorus making it the only track on the album better than "Twilight," maybe even the best Edge Of Sanity song (under forty minutes long, that is). It's one of the most moving death metal songs I have ever heard, an absolutely great addition to the classics of the genre.
The flaws of the album come with the next tracks. "The Sinner And The Sadness" is nothing more than okay, and "Enter Chaos" is way too short. Then there's the closing "Song Of Sirens," which sounds very filler to me. It's a shame to see these songs on the album where the band begins showing their best work. They make me knock down the rating a point. If only they'd left out "Song Of Sirens" I'd have been able to ignored the two before it. Oh well. While not as good as Paramaecium's 1994 release, Purgatory Afterglow shows how great Edge of Sanity are at making death metal. Though I do think the folks over at the All Music Guide are crazy for making this one their little "AMG Pick," since their next full album is easily my (and most EoS fans') choice for their best....
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(reviewed by Robert Grazer)
HIGH POINTS: Eternal Eclipse. LOW POINTS: Bleed, Until Eternity Ends.
A very short 4 song EP, and not a very good one. The opening "Until Eternity Ends" is just a dumb average death metal song with a stupid chorus, and what's that with the shouting vocal crap on "Bleed?" That has to be one of the worst songs Edge Pf Sanity have ever done. The EP ends with a cover of "Invisible Sun" from The Police's Ghost In The Machine, which is just dull and uninteresting. The only highlight on here is just before that with the all-too-short "Eternal Eclipse," which has a good tune (and awful lyrics), and might have fit in well on any of the more major albums. I don't know if this was some sort of experiment or if the band just did it for the hell of it to keep their fans quit while they worked on the following release, but the listener should probably not waste the time, effort, and money to find and buy Until Eternity Ends since out of the twelve minutes of music on here, only about three are any good. Besides, the best was just around the corner.
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(reviewed by Robert Grazer)
HIGH POINTS: Crimson. LOW POINTS: None.
As far as death metal albums go, Crimson is an extremely close runner up to Paramaecium's Within The Ancient Forest, which is an extremely close runner up to Operation: Mindcrime for simply the finest metal album ever made. I think that would make Crimson something like a fairly extremely close runner up for best metal album as well. Why? Well, if Mindcrime was the most brilliant and powerful metal album ever, and Forest was the most beautiful, then Crimson would be the most epic. This is partially due to Crimson being a single song album, about forty minutes in length, but also because the story line is excellent, one of the three best ever (the others, strangely enough, being Operation: Mindcrime and Within The Ancient Forest). It concerns a time far into the future when the final generation of humans have lost their ability to breed, and then some princess is born, but a man cannot be the father, so the daddy has got to either a god or... Well, you get the idea. Sound dumb? It's not. Maybe it's because of the wonderful execution with the music, but I love this story.
Another reason for this epic feeling is just the way the album was written. I mean, when the section of the simple opening melody comes back later in the song and is played softly with a low, almost chanting tone say "Seven years. Purity. Innocence. Dignity." right before a big bang of heavy music and death vocals shouting "Hail the queen" the song gives the listener a sense of wonder like no other. There are many, many moments like these all throughout the album. These many moments make Crimson feel like nothing else I've heard. When Swano comes with the line "Many seasons have changed, and king is old and weak," you can almost feel the time passing in the song.
As far as the music itself goes, well, you may have probably guessed how great it is. I usually like to refer to Crimson as an album rather than just a song, and that's because the whole thing is so closely knit together, and I don't really know where the first side ends and the second begins since I've never heard it in tape form. There are a couple very short pauses around the 21-minute mark (and one about 32 minutes in), so that might be it, but there is no obvious break like there was in Thick As A Brick (what, did you think I could write a review for a single-song album without mentioning the original at least half a dozen times? HA! Though just for the record I'm not sure even Brick quite matches the epic power, brilliance, and all around quality of Crimson.) bridging the two parts together. It all flows beautifully and flawlessly.
The actual structure of the song is a tad different than the "bunch of songs strung together" of the original Tull composition and even a good many side-longs. There are about, oh, I'd say a dozen or so different sections played whenever the lyrics demand the sort of mood a certain section provides. Now, in Brick there may have been a few times where parts were repeated, but not quite like it is here. This doesn't mean that in Crimson there are no little sections that only appear once or twice, there are a few of those as well as some little guitar solos in there that only appear once as well. Don't let the word "repeat" used to describe an ultra-long song scare you though. It's impossible to get bored in Crimson.
Anyway these sections of Crimson range from slow and melodic doom to all out speed death metal to acoustic sections; nearly every style of death metal is covered in this song/album. Short melodic riffs are everywhere, and the speed sections are, in my opinion, the best speed metal sections ever. There are also drum-centered parts and fast single-note strumming to create a wall of distorted guitar sound, whatever the story demands the music provides.
Dan Swano also gives a spectacular performance on this album, fitting in perfectly with every one of the many extreme metal styles covered. He also gives the best death metal scream EVER when the clean vocal line ends and he screams out the final word in the line "Is she the offspring of the unholy, GOOOOOOOOD!!!!!!!!!!" (Which, please note, is immediately followed the best doom/death metal solo I have heard, or at least one tied with Paramaecium's "The Voyage Of The Severed") Not to mention those "NEVERMORE!" screams about fourteen minutes in. It's not just his screaming or death metal vocals. He also delivers his finest clean vocal work too. During the section of the king dying his short "A whole world is mourning" part is so powerfully sung and quite moving.
Some people complain that Crimson should have been split up into different tracks for more convenient listening, but I must disagree. Crimson must be listened to as a complete whole in order to receive the full impact of the epic. In such a way it is again different from Brick, which really has no epic whole feeling to it (though it is one damn fun album), and listening to part one without part two doesn't rob the listener of any additional power that there may have been. This also makes it similar to the classic Operation: Mindcrime (another that must be taken as a whole) in that there is a very strong conceptual feel to it.
So perhaps in many ways Crimson is superior to Within The Ancient Forest, but I will say there are a couple things that Forest has that you won't find here (not that they're missing or anything, after all it's impossible to fit every good thing music has to offer into forty minutes). First off, while there are quite a many beautiful moments in Crimson, it doesn't quite match up to the never ending wonder of Forest. We do get a little climactic orchestration toward the end around 37 minutes in, but it's short and (as the majority of orchestration in metal, or any sort of rock music, is) mostly just in the background. In other words, there are no three minute cello solos anywhere on here.
If your interested in learning about any sort of extreme metal, find yourself a copy of this album. You have many extreme styles done perfectly here, in a way that not even Paramaecium could do. Finding this album isn't the easiest task, though. Despite being the band's most famous album (because of the whole one song thing) you'll certainly never see it in Media Play or Best Buy, and most of the major Internet music stores don't carry it (though most of them have a copy or two of Infernal or Purgatory Afterglow) last time I checked. Heck, even mp3s of this album are somewhat rare. Take the time to look for it, though, since it's one of the very best pieces of music ever.
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COMMENTS
[email protected] (Shaun Downton)
This is it. The best metal song ever. The best death metal album ever. 10/10, never a boring moment within. The speed metal parts are the best ever. Get this album.
(reviewed by Robert Grazer)
HIGH POINTS: The Last Song, Damned by the Damned, Forever Together Forever, Losing Myself. LOW POINTS: Helter Skelter, Hollow.
Well, what did you expect? Did you really think Edge Of Sanity could top Crimson? Of course they couldn't. But Infernal is still a great album, better than Spectral Sorrows in my opinion. Actually it's like a more polished version of that one, but still lacking a lot of the qualities that made Purgatory Afterglow and Crimson such classics. This isn't to say that it still isn't better than 90% of the death metal out there, but I'm very happy to know Paramaecium haven't reached this point in their career yet. I believe that at this point the band members also having some problems with each other or something like that, so as a result this was Dan Swano's last album with the band.
Swano is no longer the lead songwriter, but as you may have guessed his are the best entries on the album. Well, most anyway. His opener, "Hell Is Where The Heart Is" isn't that great (despite a neat intro), and neither is his "15:36," but the other three Swano songs are all fantastic. "Forever Together Forever" has a great hook and a wonderful finish, while "Losing Myself" has a Purgatory Afterglow sort of sound to it with the clean vocals, catchy chorus, and awesome melody. Finally there is "The Last Song," which is hardly death metal, yet is also extremely powerful as it changes from a long piano and clean vocal intro to a wonderful guitar solo, through a deep cello piece to close it off. There could have been no better way to finish off his work with EoS since "The Last Song" might even be better than "Velvet Dreams," which would make it the best song the band ever did (excluding "Crimson," of course).
The songs from the other band members are not that bad at all. "The Bleakness Of It All" has a different vocal style, mostly because Swano isn't singing it. The song is still good, proof that the band could make decent music without Swano at all. I'm still not buying Cryptic, though. The highlight of the non-Swano tracks is "Damned by the Damned," but while it may have all of the death metal ingredients, the main melody itself seems to me like almost a pop melody. No kidding. Interesting, but don't let it scare you since it is still one of the best songs on the album. "Inferno" is a great fast rocker with an awesome melodic break in the middle. "Hollow," on the other hand is stupid, and "Helter Skelter," despite a couple nice moments, cannot hide the fact that it is just a regular old death metal song. Infernal may not have been the swan song Dan Swano deserved, but it's still a great album, and if you enjoyed the three before it you should take the time to find a copy.
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REVIEWS:
Post your comments about Bloodbath
(reviewed by Robert Grazer)
HIGH POINTS: Furnace Funeral. LOW POINTS: None.
Brutal. If Edge of Sanity wasn’t enough for you, check out Infestdead. If that project still failed to pound your head in for you, check out Bloodbath. In the fifteen minutes here these guys manage to create music that’s more brutal, but at the same time more interesting, than pretty much any other thrash-death grindcore artist out there. Particularly the fifth minute of “Furnace Funeral,” which slows itself down with keyboard additions and a damn near melodic tune. It turns back into the grind after that, the speed not letting up much until the end of the album. But “Furnace Funeral” is the album’s (or EP’s) definite highlight -- a grindcore song that’s almost good, imagine that.
The rest sort of just pound on by. It’s either thrash or sludge. But the riffs are better written on this than a dozen Cannibal Corpse albums. The only thing I find really interesting is the fact that Mikael’s vocals finally sound at home in the grindcore music rather than Opeth’s slower sound. I still prefer his work with Edge of Sanity, though. Still, I’m not going to rate this very highly because, come on, this isn’t at all what I look for in extreme music, and it shouldn’t be what you look for either. Get yourself Morningrise or Crimson or Sonrise or Within The Ancient Forest to see what death metal should really be about. Get this if you want to see extreme metal gods sink to the level of grindcore for the sole purpose of making all of their competitors sound like weak shit.
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COMMENTS
Back a few years ago when all I listened to was metal. I saw this in a music shop and decided to listen to it coz of the cool case art. Almost immediately i gave it the title of best Death Metal album of all time (imo). Now to download it to see if it stands up to some new bands i have been introduced to . (Iced Earth , Edge Of Sanity). I somehow don't think so.
| Killing Christ | 1996 |
| Hellfuck | 1997 |
| Jesusatan | 1999 |
Infestdead is a project of Dan Swano's. It's different than most of his other death metal albums. It features Dan and Edge of Sanity member Dread. Read on.
--Robert Grazer
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released by Infestdead
(reviewed by Robert Grazer)
HIGH POINTS: Fucked By Satan, just because it's so dumb. LOW POINTS: All the others.
One of the things I like about Edge of Sanity is that they made death metal more interesting than other bands. Hell, they practically invented melodic death metal, moving beyond nearly every other band in the genre. But Infestdead isn't like that. This music is not melodic in the least. It's brutal stuff here, and I suppose that's the point (why else would you name a song "Fucked By Satan"), to make Slayer and Cannibal Corpse look like little teddy bears, and I'm guessing Dan and Dread succeeded, since we have a couple of guys who have mastered extreme music in all its form making a quite short (six songs in eleven minutes, the longest being a hair over three minutes, the shortest pair under forty-five seconds) and extremely Satanic little album.
This is certainly NOT the kind of music I like at all, though. A couple of the riffs here and there border on interesting, and I think its interesting to hear "FUCKED BY SATAN!" growled out seven times in thirty-five seconds, but I'm pretty sure this was pretty much a joke. Maybe not, seeing as Infestdead went on to do a couple more releases, but there is no way I could ever take this seriously, though its overall stupidity does make it an amusing listen, and something you would never expect from Dan Swano.
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DAN SWANO
| Moontower | 1998 |
Arguably the most talented character in all of music during the nineties, and undeniably the king of extreme music. The funny thing is, he never wanted to be such a big death metal man. His first love has always been progressive rock, though he never thought it would get him as far as his death metal career with Edge of Sanity, so he chose to stick to death metal, but as he puts it himself "From that moment on there was this huge hole in my soul that nothing seemed to fill." Dan has recently fully returned to his progressive rock dream, and completely abandoned death metal for the time being.
Dan Swano is best known for his work with Edge Of Sanity, which was where he got his first record deal (he was seventeen at the time, so his mother had to sign the contract), but his earliest major band dates back to the late eighties with Unicorn, and he considers that to be his only real band, with everything else only being side projects, and he's had quite a few of them. And each one had something to offer. With Edge Of Sanity, he became one of the biggest pioneers in melodic death metal. With Infestdead experimented with some of the most Satanic and brutal music ever created. With Nightingale he moves almost completely away from metal and into extremely melodic progressive territory. With his solo project, which I'm reviewing here, he showed his ability to create quality progressive death metal.
And there have been so many others, some that I'm not familiar with yet (I have yet to see a Unicorn CD for less than $30, and I can't even find any mp3s of them), others that I will be very soon. Nearly every time I discover another of his albums I end up finding it to be another masterpiece. There was a time I thought that all there was to this man was Edge Of Sanity, but EoS may not even be my favorite of his projects anymore. Nearly everything he does is worth a look. Oh yeah, Dan has worked with some other major extreme bands such as Godsend, Opeth, Therion, Theater of Tragedy, Katatonia and several others.
And another thing, in addition to being skilled on several different instruments, Dan's a fantastic vocalist. His voice is incredibly powerful and moving, both clean and distorted. Every single time he sings on any record that I have yet heard he brings the music to a higher, more beautiful level. I still have yet to hear anyone who dislikes his vocals. And I also have yet to see anyone who has seriously looked at his work call it shit. In fact, I have yet to hear about anyone who seriously looked at his work and didn't think it was some of the greatest music ever written.
His one problem, though, is poor choices with record labels. His albums are quite difficult to find. Not only because he is Swedish, because other Swedish bands (In Flames, Opeth, for starters) are easy to find in other countries, but you have to look quite hard for Swano's work. Sad, yes, but it is possible to find it (check out http://www.promusicfind.com/ or http://www.musicselection.com/). If you want more information about him and his music (like you should) check out his own webpage at http://come.to/swano.
--Robert Grazer
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released by Dan Swano
(reviewed by Robert Grazer)
HIGH POINTS: Encounterparts, Empty Phrases, Uncreation, Patchworks, Sun Of The Night. LOW POINTS: Maybe you didn't read correctly. This is a Dan Swano album. (None)
By 1998 Dan Swano had released over 20 albums and EPs, participated in the making of several major albums by other bands, pioneered the melodic death metal genre, and became the biggest name in all of extreme metal, but he hadn't yet released a solo album with his own name, and not Nightingale, written on it. And so it is with Moontower. His goal here was to make a progressive death metal album, but not of the big epic style of Opeth or late Edge Of Sanity. No song here is much longer than six minutes, but all of them are melodic death metal songs, complete with clean vocals and acoustic guitar sections, mixed in with piano and synthesizers in a very 70s prog-like style.
But don't let that fool you. This, while certainly as far away from thrash as death metal can get, is still a very heavy album. The music pounds down heavily, but never loses focus or gets lost in just being brutal. Everything here is structured and melodic. Plus Dan's best death vocal work can be found here. His voice is much clearer than it was with Edge Of Sanity (partly due to excellent production), but still brutal, though it isn't too difficult to figure out what he is saying. There is some clean vocal work as well, very little, though, but when it does pop up it's just as great as ever. Some of his great guitar solos can be found here as well, and they're still the same melodic entries into his songs that they were before.
Some songs start out with pure guitar crunch, and others with the keyboards, like "Patchworks" (where the synths sound similar to those in "A Serenade for the Dead") and "Add Reality" (which has a gorgeous piano intro before a great EoS-style riff comes in). And a lot of the choruses are memorable and melodic as well, and that's often where the synths do their best work (especially on the pre-chorus bridge of "Uncreation"). This all helps give Moontower a powerful mood, often dark, but never clouding the music. Never is this mood stronger on the album than my favorite track, the six minute instrumental "Encounterparts," which is an incredible progressive entry where the synths completely rule the track, bringing in all sorts of great melodies one after another, with many acoustic sections with the synths backing or leading as needed. Toward the end the song switches into some regular melodic death more toward the style of Schaliach, before finishing off. It may not have the advantage of Swano's vocals, but in this case they aren't needed to make a truly powerful track.
The intro to the following closing track helps build the music back to death metal territory before it comes pounding away again, in "In Empty Phrases." The whole album comes together perfectly on this closing track, which is filled with all of the synthesizers, the solos, the choruses, the brutal vocals, and everything else that we've had the whole way through. Not that we haven't had these things on the same level throughout the rest of the album. No, the first three tracks ("Sun Of The Night," "Patchworks," and "Uncreation") are also great examples, but if you want to hear great death metal solo-Swano style, "In Empty Phrases" is the song for you.
You can think of it as Edge Of Sanity's real release following Infernal (instead of the Swano-less Cryptic), but to be honest this album is better than any Edge Of Sanity album bar Crimson. Dan calls Moontower one of his favorite projects among his own work, very quite proud of the work he came up with here. It only took him a few months to put this out, which is another amazing feat. Overall, Moontower is another great addition to an already astounding collection of great music, and while he says this will be his last death metal release for a long time, it further secures his place as the god of the genre.
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