EDGE OF SANITY — Nothing but Death Remains (review)

EDGE OF SANITY — Nothing but Death Remains album cover Album · 1991 · Death Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
The Angry Scotsman
The debut album by Edge of Sanity

This is a decent yet largely unspectacular work. It's not bad by any means, it's just not very great either. "Nothing but Death Remains" isn't you standard unrelenting death metal of 1991. Quite the opposite, this album has lots of doom metal in it. The blast beat barrages oscillate with slow, doomy marches. There's a good bit of mid tempo stuff as well, all 3 getting their fair share on the album and to different degrees.

The guitar is unwaveringly heavy, the riffing is awesome, the drumming is effective with moments of flair, and Swano's vocals are gravely. I really like his vocals myself. The quality is low fi and gritty, (which is a good thing here) and there's a sense of groove that the vast majority of death metal bands lack. Even a few synths thrown in for good measure.

Only knock on it is the lack of variation. Every song is pretty much the same. The only possible standout is the opening track thanks to its keyboard intro and backgrounds, plus some interesting drumming. The rest of the album is samey. The harsh vocals and distorted guitar never let up for a moment. Of course this is death metal, and thankfully the songs are pretty short and there's only 8, so while samey the songs and album don't go on for too long. If they were any longer, or if there were any more songs, this album would start to suffer.

A good album, not exactly earth shattering but still an impressive debut and shows some real songwriting skill and musical sensibility.

Three Stars
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UMUR wrote:
more than 2 years ago
There was a metal programme on the local radio station that aired in the early nineties and I remember that my introduction to Edge of Sanity was the demo version of Decepted by the Cross from the Kur-Nu-Gi-A (1990) demo. The version on Nothing But Death Remains has always come off as inferiour to the demo version.

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