EDGE OF SANITY — Nothing but Death Remains (review)

EDGE OF SANITY — Nothing but Death Remains album cover

Album · 1991 · Death Metal

3.5/5 · 2011-08-03
UMUR

"Nothing But Death Remains" is the debut full-length studio album by Swedish death metal act Edge of Sanity. The album was released through Black Mark Productions in July 1991. Edge of Sanity had released several demo cassette tapes during the late 80s/early 90s, and by the time "Nothing But Death Remains" was released, they were already a pretty established and well known death metal act.

"Nothing But Death Remains" features 8 tracks (9 tracks if you have the Japanese version) of old school Swedish death metal distributed over 31:52 minutes. I wouldn´t call the album a typical Swedish old school death metal release though. Tracks like "Tales..." and "Decepted by the Cross" feature way too many tempo changes, relatively technical playing, a couple of time signature changes, and some progressive ideas too, for "Nothing But Death Remains" to be called a "regular" old school Swedish death metal release. It was obvious already this early on in the band´s career that they were not a one trick pony. The music is still pretty raw and brutal though. The vocals are brutal growls and there is enough primal energy in the tracks to satisfy even the most conservative old school death metal fans, so while Edge of Sanity dip their toes in technical/progressive seas, it´s far from a full swim.

While the songwriting is of a pretty high standard for the time and the musicianship is great too, there is unfortunately a pretty serious issue with the album that drags my rating down. The sound production is not very well sounding. It´s like the album was recorded too high and therefore there are several sections that sounds distorted. The worst part is how a couple of times during the playing time the volume suddenly drops though. It´s like someone fell asleep while mixing the album and accidently hit the volume button a couple of times. The drums have an awkward sound too and the guitars sound thin.

With a stronger sound production "Nothing But Death Remains" could have been a really great album and I would probably have rated it with a 3.5 - 4 star (75%) rating, but because of the rather weak production, I can´t defend giving more than a 3.5 star (70%) rating.

more than 2 years ago
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J-Man wrote:

more than 2 years ago

That may have been the case then. The CD version doesn't sound great or anything, but I didn't notice any of those weird technical issues.

UMUR wrote:

more than 2 years ago

Thanks Jeff :-). My vinyl version of the album have several of those nasty volume drops, but I don´t know if they have fixed it for the CD version.

J-Man wrote:

more than 2 years ago

...And nice review as always. :-)

J-Man wrote:

more than 2 years ago

Interesting comments about the production - I don't remember enjoying it very much either, but I also don't recall any of the sudden volume drops. I'll have to hear the album again at some point.