A bunch of older titles from Swedish prog-death titans Edge Of Sanity are back in print on vinyl, in new re-mastered colored vinyl editions with printed inner-sleeves; they look and sound terrific, and we've picked up three of them so far, 1992's Unorthodox, 1993's The Spectral Sorrows, and 1994's Purgatory Afterglow.

Edge Of Sanity's fourth album Purgatory Afterglow from 1994 wasn't as focused in its delivery of the band's unconventional mixture of epic death metal, progressive rock and gothic bombast as their previous album Spectral Sorrows and the songwriting isn't quite as strong, but I'm still quite partial to this ambitious slab of Swedish heaviness. It's heavier on the synths, that's for sure. When the album opens, you could forgiven for thinking that you're hearing some moody pop outfit, as Dan Swano croons softly over the wash of dreamy keyboards that introduce "Twilight". But that kicks into the song's main death metal assault pretty quickly, and it's as anthemic and triumphant as anything I've heard from them, welding a mid-tempo groove and chainsaw guitars to a rousing melodic chorus. Sinister and sweeping Swedish death metal mastery, absolutely killer stuff. From there, Afterglow weaves through a maze of catchy darkwave synths and stretches of electronic ambience alongside the grinding death metal, and Swano employs more of his clean singing here, a baritone croon that sort of reminds me of Peter Murphy a little, at least at certain spots on the album. Songs tend be longer and more sprawling this time around, and the overall feel is a little more indulgent than the concise delivery of Spectral, but these songs still pack a hell of a punch, dishing out legions of guttural, crushing riffage laced with folky guitar leads, a variety of tempos as the music shifts from blasting violence to rocking death n' roll to crawling doom-laden darkness. Monstrous boogie gives way to ear-friendly hard rock hooks that are just as quickly swallowed up in vomitous sludge. Ripping thrash erupts from the likes of "Silent", then leads into the organ-soaked power pop darkness of "Black Tears", which could be seen as a follow-up to the similarly catchy Sisters Of Mercy-esque song "Sacrificed" from Spectral. And there's a stomping, Helmet-esque stop-start groove that cuts through the songs "Velvet Dreams" and "Song Of Sirens" towards the end, giving those songs a quasi-industrial metal edge that is admittedly a little more dated than the band's more straight-forward death metal. Still a blast, though. And by early 90's standards, all of this was pretty adventurous, at least stylistically. They were still an album away from their most acclaimed work, Crimson, but Edge Of Sanity were already creating some of the most interesting, eccentric stuff coming out of the Swedish death metal scene.