Artist: Edge Of Sanity
Country: Sweden
Label: Century Media
Formats: LP / CD
Year: 2025
Without wanting to do any wrong to the musical legacy of Edge Of Sanity, this has always been a band that has mostly been appreciated within the national metal scene in Sweden. Of course, Dan Swanö’s work has been acknowledged by basically everyone and it is hard not to own at least one piece of music that hasn’t his fingerprint on it, being it either as a musician in the many bands he has been in or as a technician. But still, when it comes to Swedish Death Metal, most people will always point to the big four of the Swedish scene. Mostly because Edge Of Sanity has always been a bit of the odd one out, a bit of an outcast musically. That, for the most part, came from Swanö’s tendency to just do things differently and his deep rooted penchant for progressive music.
Still, albums like ‘Unorthodox’ and ‘The Spectral Sorrows’ are modest classics in Death Metal history. Their musical value and relevance are still proven today as the albums they reissue show their demand. But even these albums, widely regarded as Edge Of Sanity’s finest hour, show a band that is not quite walking the same path as Entombed or Grave. The occasional clean singing, melodicism and overall musical sophistication puts them on a different level from most of their peers.
Not in the least place due to Daniel Ekeroth’s ‘Swedish Death Metal’-book that was published in 2008, it was shown to the outer world how important Edge Of Sanity was in the development of Swedish Death Metal. Not only as a musical style, but also as an inner movement, a phenomenon. A lot of that discrepancy between how the Swedes look at “their” Edge Of Sanity and the rest of the world tended to perceive it has to do with the incompetence of their Black Mark Records label that always seemed to be mostly focussed on Bathory and regarded their other bands as just side-projects.
Early tape traders, however, knew that there was something going on with a band by the name of Edge Of Sanity. Before the band went on to record their still rather straight forward ‘Nothing But Death Remains’-album, Edge Of Sanity released a couple of demos that were at least mildly unambiguous. These demos circulated heavily amongst these fanatical individuals who were sending each other tapes from all places of the world. It is exactly these demos that are compiled on ‘Elegy – Chapter I’, released on both vinyl and CD by Century Media. Consequently we are here presented with the first three demos completed with a demo from 1992.
To be precise, ‘Elegy – Chapter I’ is 23 tracks taken from ‘Euthanasia’ (1989), ‘The Immortal Rehearsals’ (1990), ‘Kur-Nu-Gi-A’ (1990), ‘The Dead’ (1990) and ‘Dead But Dreaming’ (1992). But as expected, Dan Swanö could not leave imperfect history untouched, and he remastered the whole lot. Again without wanting to take anything away from the man’s legacy or talent, he hasn’t quite got the Midas touch. If it was for me, I don’t think these songs needed a whole remake and could suffice with just levelling the volume. The CD version even has an extra disc that has ‘Euthanasia’, ‘Kur-Nu-Gi-A’ and ‘The Dead’ completely remixed. From a musician’s point of view I can understand that you’d like to present your work as good as possible, but as a far of (old!) Death Metal I am basically interested in how things sounded all the way back then. I want to understand and feel where the band came from and what the impact was of the original recordings. That opportunity is completely taken away when you decide to tamper and polish such old recordings.
What’s left now is a rather clean and facelifted version of how Edge Of Sanity sounded around the turn of the 1990’s. Admittedly, they were never a band that had much ‘ambiance’ or depths in the production, at least compared to the majority of their peers, but ‘Elegy – Chapter I’ could very well just be a Death Metal record that was canned just at any moment in time, some decade ago or even yesterday.
Still, this collection of songs is a great listen for everybody who shares some appreciation for Edge Of Sanity. Besides, it is undeniably that along this nearly 80-minute set you get to hear a band that is increasingly widening its view and perception of the Death Metal genre. Especially with the transition to the ‘Dead But Dreaming’-demo from 1992, you’ll hear that they were already flirting with more profound unorthodox song writing structures and melodies, just alongside the HM2-like buzzing tones of the guitars. And, for someone with an above-average interest in the background and history of music, it is absolutely great to hear how these premature songs sounded before their final versions were put to tape and released as their classic ‘Unorthodox’-album later that same year.
As a whole, I am definitely in two minds here. On the one hand I enjoyed hearing these demos in succession, showing the early musical evolvement of the band. On the other I am having difficulties in getting over the fact that it just seems so hard to leave imperfect history alone and be proud of what you’ve achieved with such old recordings as the starting point. Judging from the “Chapter I” in the title and the recent Century Media reissues of the full Edge Of Sanity discography, I assume we’ll be having more demos later on.
