For the longest time, Edge Of Sanity's releases on Black Mark have been impossible for me to track down, but at long last they've become available through one of our suppliers and I'm finally able to carry what are some of the coolest, weirdest death metal records to ever come out of Sweden. The only thing is, is that they are somewhat pricey, and for some reason the Until Eternity Ends Ep costs just as much as the full length albums, even though it only has four songs. That aside, if you're a fan of visionary multi-instrumentalist/producer Dan Swano and his progressive, genre-defying death metal band Edge Of Sanity, you'll want to grab any and all of these fantastic discs.

Released in 1994 in between their melodic death metal classic The Spectral Sorrows and the innovative prog-death album Purgatory Afterglow, Until Eternity Ends was a stop-gap release that effectively bridges the divide between those two full-lengths. The first three songs on the Ep fall within the rocking, mostly mid-paced melodic death metal of Spectral; opener "Until Eternity Ends" is supreme melodic Swedish death, rocking and anthemic with killer riffs and a crushing guitar tone, but when the vocals come in, it's something very different, a kind of doomy goth metal, Swano singing in a deep distorted croon that sounds sort of like Peter Steele from Type O Negative. The death n' roll of "Eternal Eclipse" slips into moody vocal harmonies and another melodic chorus, and "Bleed" teases with a rocking intro before it launches into total thrash metal with a massive groovy breakdown for the chorus.

All three are fierce, catchy doses of EOS's brand of Swedish death, but they save the Ep's most memorable song for last with a cover of The Police's "Invisible Sun", which is surprisingly true to the original save for the addition of the heavy metallic guitars, Swano singing in a rich crooning voice, transforming this into haunting, metallic goth.