It all started with one riff. In a recent interview, former Edge Of Sanity mainman Dan Swanö said that the sessions for his band’s fifth album, Crimson, began with him wanting to get more out of a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it guitar part he’d used in his goth rock project Nightingale. From those humble origins came a masterpiece: a 40-minute, one-song labyrinth that remains a benchmark for progressive death metal – even if it never quite found the mass adulation it deserved.
For those who don’t know, Edge Of Sanity were formed in 1989 by singer, guitarist and future multi-instrumentalist Swanö, plus co-guitarist Andreas Axelsson. The two would remain the outfit’s key tandem for much of the time between their founding and their 2003 disbanding, but that stability belies the musical experimenting they did. After kicking off as a straight-ahead death metal act, they pulled influence from the developing prog metal, black metal and melodeath movements: sounds Swanö engaged with by producing Katatonia, Dark Funeral and more in the early-to-mid 90s.
