EDGE OF SANITY - Crimson II 2-CD

Issued in a 2CD jewel case with clear tray and a 32-page booklet, housed in a O-card.

A range of keyboard and guitar effects are used to paint a genuinely eerie and piercingly expressive picture. This is something few bands could ever hope to do. He's taken something that is normally corny and above all else, artificial sounding, and made it very human. Anyone can play ugly chords on a distorted guitar and deem it dark. Anyone can play some major chords and deem it happy. Or minor chords and call it sad. But after listening to an album like this, you know that there are ways to bring about feeling that go far, far deeper than that. And that to me is part of the magic of music. That intangible something that connects the source and the recipient.

That is what sets something great and something masterful apart. Finding albums that are just solid all the way through is rare enough. But even if I really love the style, and the songs all work, it doesn’t mean it’s masterful. The gripping emotion has to be there, the boundary breaking has to be there. It has to transcend genres and all conventional understandings of music. It has to be something that puts meaning into the word art, and this is it. And only a brilliant mind like Swanö could do it for the duration of an entire 43 minute song/album.

This is the benchmark of mastery.