''Crimson II'' is the eighth and final full-length studio album by Swedish

death metal Death metal is an extreme metal, extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. It typically employs heavily distorted and low-tuned guitars, played with techniques such as palm muting and tremolo picking; deep death growl, growling vocals; aggressive ...

band

Edge of Sanity Edge of Sanity was a Swedish death metal band that, alongside Opeth, is commonly regarded as being the first to fuse extreme metal styles like death metal, death and black metal with progressive rock. The group was founded by Dan Swanö in 1989 ...

and is a continuation of the storyline first heard on the album ''

Crimson Crimson is a rich, deep red color, inclining to purple. It originally meant the color of the kermes dye produced from a scale insect, '' Kermes vermilio'', but the name is now sometimes also used as a generic term for slightly bluish-red col ...

'' (1996). It is the only Edge of Sanity release that does not feature original members

Andreas Axelsson ::''See also Andreas Axelsson (criminal)''. Andreas Axelsson is a Swedish musician, best known as a guitarist in progressive death metal band Edge of Sanity. Before he joined Edge of Sanity, Axelsson was the singer in black metal band Marduk, ...

and Benny Larsson.

Opeth Opeth is a Swedish progressive metal band from Stockholm, formed in 1990. The band incorporates folk music, folk, blues, classical music, classical, and jazz elements into its usually lengthy compositions, as well as strong influences from deat ...

frontman

Mikael Åkerfeldt Lars Mikael Åkerfeldt (; born 17 April 1974)Mikael Åkerfeldt
, Op ...

, who provided vocals and guitar on the first album, also does not appear. Instead, it features contributions from guest musicians

Mike Wead Mike Wead (born Mickael Vikström on 6 April 1967) is a Swedish guitarist who lives in Stockholm. Wead contributed to heavy metal bands such as ''Hexenhaus'', Memento Mori, Abstrakt Algebra, The Haunted, Edge of Sanity, Candlemass, The Pro ...

, Jonas Granvik, and brothers Roger and Simon Johannson. Released during the advent of online

music piracy Music piracy is the copying and distributing of recordings of a piece of music for which the rights owners (composer, recording artist, or copyright-holding record company) did not give consent. In the contemporary legal environment, it is a form ...

, the album was indexed into over 40 track splits on the CD pressings, running from 18 seconds to a minute and a half, to discourage ripping and sharing (despite software like

iTunes iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...

having the ability to rip groups of tracks as one file). When it was later released to digital stores and streaming services, the album was indexed into 9 tracks that are not all split according to the song movements; this caused the movement names to be extended with "Aftermath II" and "III" even though only the final two tracks contain the movement itself. Neither Swanö nor label Black Mark Production have commented on why this is the case or why the edited version was used. The album was remixed and slightly edited for the compilation '' When All Is Said'' (2006) so it would fit on one CD. Full versions of both songs were used for a combined vinyl release in 2003. For this, the song was split in half, with side 2 picking up at "Achilles Heel."Crimson I&II on Discogs
/ref> In 2011, it was reissued on "ice blue" vinyl but used the digital release as the audio source, as each section of the songs fade in and out at the exact times they do in the Amazon MP3 release. The album is dedicated to the memory of

Death Death is the end of life; the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain a living organism. Death eventually and inevitably occurs in all organisms. The remains of a former organism normally begin to decompose sh ...

frontman

Chuck Schuldiner Charles Michael Schuldiner (May 13, 1967 – December 13, 2001) was an American musician. He cofounded the pioneering Florida death metal band Death in 1983, in which he was the guitarist, primary songwriter and only continuous member until his ...

Track listing

Note: Although the album consists of one 43-minute-long song, it really is split up into 9

movements Movement may refer to: Generic uses * Movement (clockwork), the internal mechanism of a timepiece * Movement (sign language), a hand movement when signing * Motion, commonly referred to as movement * Movement (music), a division of a larger c ...

Digital Edition

To further confusion, the digital release of the album uses the ''When All Is Said'' remix/edit and splits it differently, causing some movement times to shift out of alignment. Most of the tracks also fade in and out at the beginning/end.

Personnel

Dan Swanö Dan-Erland Swanö (born 10 March 1973), also known as Dan "The Man" Swanö, is a Swedish musician and record producer who is currently the vocalist, guitarist, ex-bassist and ex-drummer for the band Nightingale, lately vocalist, keyboardist and ...

−

lead Lead () is a chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol Pb (from Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a Heavy metal (elements), heavy metal that is density, denser than most common materials. Lead is Mohs scale, soft and Ductility, malleabl ...

and

backing vocals A backing vocalist is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists. A backing vocalist may also sing alone as a lead-in to the main vocalist's entry or to sing a counter-melody. Backing vocalists are us ...

, all other instruments,

production Production may refer to: Economics and business * Production (economics) * Production, the act of manufacturing goods * Production, in the outline of industrial organization, the act of making products (goods and services) * Production as a stat ...

, mixing,

engineering Engineering is the practice of using natural science, mathematics, and the engineering design process to Problem solving#Engineering, solve problems within technology, increase efficiency and productivity, and improve Systems engineering, s ...

* Roger Johansson − lead vocals * Jonas Granvik − backing vocals *

−

lead guitar Lead guitar (also known as solo guitar) is a musical part for a guitar in which the guitarist plays melody lines, instrumental fill passages, guitar solos, and occasionally, some riffs and chords within a song structure. The lead is the featur ...

, engineering * Simon Johansson − lead guitar

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Crimson II 2003 albums Edge of Sanity albums Albums with cover art by Kristian Wåhlin 2000s concept albums Albums produced by Dan Swanö Sequel albums