CRIMSON

This is a very good album. It is perhaps the most adventurous and experimental death metal record I have listened to. One of my favorite parts of the album is the story. The story, about a dying Earth and it's last inhabitants and a queen hellbent on domination and destruction, is very well written and the band does a great job in keeping up with the story and not straying away from it with long instrumental passages. The instrumentation actually goes along with the story very well.

Some things about this album did bug me, however. I felt like the band, although fantastic on this record, did not play enough melodic music on the album. I felt like the raw death metal took over the melodic death metal too much (and some parts of the album would have done very well with some nice melodic death metal). Some of the riffs on the album also seemed a bit too dry and rather uninspired (especially around the 15-20 minute mark and some towards the end).

I'm probably emphasizing some of the flaws on this album too much, because this album is great. the story, clean and death vocals, and the instrumentation were all top notch on this record and they are especially top notch when considering that it's in the spectrum of death metal. I recommend this album to any fan of prog who's willing to take the growling death metal vocals.