CRIMSON

Fantastic album!One of my favorite albums.Extreme prog metal at its best!This album contains only one song(40 minutes).The members are:Dan Swano:Guitars,keyboards,clean and death metal vocals,Andreas Axelsson:Guitar,Sami Nerberg:Guitar,Anders Lindberg:Bass guitar,Benny Larsson:Drums and Inspiration and the guests are:Anders Mareby:Electric Cello(great solo) and Mikael Akerfeldt:Lead guitar(fantastic solo)and screams(perfect performance).There are great ideas which are repeated because the story changes its chapters.Here we have prog rock,gothic metal,death/black metal,folk elements and some electronic elements.

The artwork is like a comic's cover.It shows the Queen(the main character of the story)closed in a crimson cage.Also there are some faces on the cage(and the place that there's the cage and the other cages with another queens(I think)is made of stone(it's like a cave's room)) which look like totem faces.

My most favorite parts except from all the album and Dan Swano's performance are:the vocals and the guitar solo of Mikael Akerfeldt,the cello solo of Anders Mareby,the dynamic beginning and the folk-style singing(which reminds me a little the greek traditional songs)which there is almost two minutes before the end of the song.

I recommend it to all open-minded music fans because it's not for everyone.A metal gem and not only!

My grade:8,5/10