Edge of Sanity
Edge of Sanity was a Swedish melodic death metal band that was started in 1989 as a pure project and became known for their combination of melodic death metal and progressive rock.
Band History
1989 - 1992 Founding and Early Development
Was founded the music group of singer and drummer Dan Swanö and bassist Andreas Axelsson. Shortly after the establishment Axelsson moved to the guitar and Anders Lindberg took over the bass. A second guitarist was found in Sami Nerberg while the drums were soon taken up by Benny Larsson.
With this line several demos were recorded. The demo Kur- Nu -Gi -A helped the band in 1990 to a contract with the label Black Mark Production. The Stockholm Montezuma Studio then the debut Nothing But Death Remains ( 1991), directed by The Boss was ( among other things produced Bathory ) recorded.
A year later, the band released their second album, Unorthodox, which partially caused the genre typical limitations behind. Polyphonic guitar leads, acoustic elements and various other variations included in the Death Metal band with a. The last track of the album, When All Is Said, has completely death-metal - atypical ballad-like character. For this song and a music video was filmed. Furthermore, one could for the first time next growls Dan Swanös hear clear vocals in the song Enigma.
At this time Swanö also worked increasingly intense as a music producer for various bands in his own Gorysound studio and gained thereby a certain level of recognition within the music scene.
1993 - 1997 International Success
The third album The Spectral Sorrows (1993 ) was unusually progressive and seemed to be influenced very loud laut.de by Dan Swanös work on his side project Unicorn. The album contained among other things, Manowar Cover Blood of My Enemies and the song Sacrificed, the " served the Sisters of Mercy to honor " according laut.de. In the next EP Until Eternity Ends (1994 ) found himself with Invisible Sun a cover of The Police.
Also in 1994 appeared Purgatory Afterglow, which can be considered as a consensus between Dan album Swanös penchant for fancy experiments and the wishes of his death-metal - affinity fellow musicians. Nevertheless Swanö wrote the album almost entirely alone, it emerged first major disputes within the band. Swanö devoted himself then his new one-man project Nightingale, which can be rather assigned to the Gothic Metal.
In 1996 the album Crimson, in which Dan Swanö, consistently put his idea of an album, which consists only of a song. The album was recorded within 24 hours and consists of only a single 40 -minute song that the diversity of the group represents: There are found among other fast and worn parts, Swanös voice varies from melodic vocals to the various guttural singing techniques, and related on the keyboard voice can draw comparisons with Marillion. Crimson became the most commercially successful work of the band. Following the publication of the only headlining tour followed by Germany in the history of Edge of Sanity.
1997 - 2001 Volume crisis and unofficial resolution
For the 1997 album Infernal published Dan Swanö composed half of the material and played it one up on the drums themselves, while the other half composed from the rest of the still existing among the original members group together and was taken, with Swanö only contributed the vocals. During the work in Peter Tägtgren's Abyss studio it became clear that the band in this setting could not have for much longer.
Dan Swanö wanted to continue the band alone after completion of the recordings, but was rejected by his label Black Mark Production: The rest of Edge of Sanity was to already create with Robert Karlsson on vocals doing the following album Cryptic. The album was also released still in 1997 and was again clearly oriented to the original sound of the band. It was followed by another tour and a " best of" double CD under the title Evolution ( 1999), before the band was disbanded in 2001.
2003 latest album and final resolution
Swanö meantime had his third solo project, Moontower founded, and simultaneously worked on songs for Nightingale. Although he heard the desire for a further publication of Edge of Sanity repeatedly by fans, he did not want to be active with this band. Only on the wooing of an Iranian fans to write a veritable sequel to Crimson, and even offered to take over the accumulated production costs, Swanö began to think about this possibility. After Black Mark Production Swanö offered a sufficient budget to production of the album and this message hastily gave it to the media, Swanö was persuaded and eventually began writing another album for Edge of Sanity.
The Crimson II ( 2003) named album played Swanö alone in his own apartment one ( the individual studios he calls it, for example, The Room and The Office). Only the lead guitars were of the guest musicians Mike Wead (King Diamond, Mercyful Fate ) and Simon Johansson ( Memory Garden ) and recorded as Swanö was no longer satisfied with his growls over this by Roger Johansson ( Paganizer ). Nevertheless Swanö ultimately took over about half of all guttural vocals itself
The loud Swanö definitely last album of the band musically linked directly to its eponymous predecessor to, once again consists of only a single song (but this has divided into different titles ) and convinced both critics and fans again. Lyrically told Crimson II a coherent, poetic story, which was conceived by Clive Nolan (Arena ).