Before I begin this article, I would like to apologise for not posting for about a month. I've had a lot of my free time cut into for the last few weeks and today has been the first day I've really found to write something. To make up for it, I'm going to review the boxset that helped introduce me to a band that I now hold dear to my heart: Crimson Glory.
If you aren't already familiar with Crimson Glory, here's their basic history: they formed in 1979 as Pierced Arrow (which was later changed to Beowulf and, finally, Crimson Glory). The line up of what would become Crimson Glory came together in 1983, when their vocalist, lead guitarist and bassist quit, although John Patrick McDonald (better known by the fans as Midnight) joined after the band's second vocalist (Mark Ormes) quit. The only members of the Pierced Arrow/Beowulf line up to make it into Crimson Glory are rhythm guitarist Ben Jackson and drummer Dana Burnell (although bassist Jeff Lords did play with the pre-Crimson Glory line up for a period of time before returning). After that, they rehearsed for a few years before releasing their debut self-titled album in October 1986, the tour for which caused a bit of interest due to the band's habit of wearing silver masks onstage. They cut these down to Phantom Of The Opera style ones for their second album, Transcendence, which was released in November 1988, before doing away with them completely for their third album, Strange and Beautiful, which was released in June 1991. This third album is commonly considered to be more like a Midnight solo album than a Crimson Glory album, since it featured a noticeable stylistic change and a cover that would probably make more sense if you were higher than a helium-propelled kite. They did have a different drummer on the Strange and Beautiful album, as he and Ben Jackson had quit after the Transcendence tour, forcing lead guitarist Jon Drenning to do the guitars for the album. Before they could tour for the album, however, Midnight left the band and retired for a decade. Although a replacement was found in the form of David Van Landing (I'm presuming that's a stage name: feel free to correct me if that's his actual name), they only did a short lived tour of the US before officially breaking up in 1992.
But that wasn't the end of the Crimson Glory story. In between the break up of Crimson Glory and their reforming in 1998, there were three bands out there which will be of interest to fans of the band: Parish (which included departed guitarist Ben Jackson), the oddly named Erotic Liquid Culture (I'm not making that up), which was the last line up of Crimson Glory, and Crush, which was pretty much the same band, but with Billy Martinez on vocals instead of Landing. They released albums in 1995 (Parish's Envision), 1996 (Erotic Liquid Culture's self-titled album) and 1995 (Crush's self-titled album) and...well, I've listened to one track by Erotic Liquid Culture and I heard a more hard rock sound to the song than the prog metal of Crimson Glory, which isn't bad in and of itself, but I felt disappointed by it. I've heard good things about the Parish album, though, so I might review it sometime in the future. Still, none of those albums really made an impact anywhere and you'd probably be lucky to find copies of those albums anywhere, so I recommend giving them a listen online before you consider purchasing them if you find them for sale anywhere.
Anyway, in late 1996, plans for a reunion of Crimson Glory were being made by Drenning and Lords. They did contact Midnight, but he wasn't up to recording an album the band's standards and he wasn't interested, so Wade Black (then of Lucian Blaque) was called up, as was ex-Savatage drummer Steve Wacholz (although he didn't play on the final album, 1999's Astronomica). Ben Jackson rejoined before the album was recorded, as Parish had broken up. The album master tapes were stolen at one point, so the band had to re-record the entire album before it was finally released in August 1999. To say the album is somewhat like the Judas Priest albums with Tim Owens on vocals would be a good way to put it, since quite a few fans did not like Wade Black's performance on the album. However, the band did do a tour for the album alongside Kamelot and Evergrey. Issues came up during a tour and the band went on another hiatus in 2000.
The next five years didn't really see a lot of interesting stuff beyond a few solo albums (two from Ben Jackson, two from Midnight, who also made a guest appearance on Genius: A Rock Opera and Ben Jackson's second solo album) and a few other things by various other members of the band (a guest appearance by Steve Wacholz on Jon Oliva's Pain's 2004 album Tage Mahal, three albums with different bands by Wade Black (2002's Xiled to Infinity and One by Seven Witches, 2003's Until the Bitter End by Rick Renstrom and 2004's Dogface by Leash Law, as well as a guest appearance on Ben Jackson's first solo album) and 1989 live keyboardist (who returned to Crimson Glory in 2011) John Zahner's two albums (the aforementioned Tage Mahal and 2003's Watching in Silence by Circle II Circle). There was a lot of talk about a potential reunion with the original line up, but, until their official reunion in March 2005, there wasn't a lot of confirmed reunion signs until July 2003, when Ben Jackson posted on his website that they were waiting for a sign from Midnight about a reunion to be ready to happen. This was before the guest appearance by Midnight on Ben's second solo album happened. The two of them also did an acoustic show together in July 2004 and were invited to do a meet and greet at ProgPower V.
So, when the reunion happened in 2005, there were plans to write their fifth album (intended to be titled Metatron, Lucifer and the Divine Chaos: later shortened to Divine Chaos"), re-record Astronomica with Midnight on vocals, release a DVD of their 1989 show in Bradenton and re-release their first two albums in the form of a boxset. However, disaster struck in May 2006, when their label closed down, meaning that these things never came to pass. Still, things were still going reasonably well for the line up until January 2007, when Midnight was arrested for driving under the influence. The band parted with Midnight because of his state putting the band at risk (it is possible there is more to this story than I know) and Wade Black rejoined the band. They played two more shows before fading into the shadows again.
The thing that caused the band to return again was due to the death of Midnight on the 8th of July 2009. At the time, he had his family, friends and bandmates at his side and, at 3:30, he passed away of a stomach aneurysm (the press statement incorrectly said it was total liver and kidney failure). At the time, he was 47 years old. In memory of him, the band did a headlining show at 2009's PowerProg X. The list of guest vocalists at the show is seriously impressive, but one name that will be of much interest to people is the guy who would later become the lead vocalist of Crimson Glory and is now singing for another of my favourite bands: Queensryche's Todd La Torre. He was a somewhat late addition to the show, as Jon Oliva's Pain guitarist Matt LaPorte mentioned him to Jon Drenning a few weeks prior to the show and he was added to the line up. According to some interviews I've read, people backstage already knew he was something special, despite the fact that he had only done backing vocals before then on an album that had not even been released yet (the 2010 Jon Oliva's Pain album Festival) and, in May 2010, he was officially added to the band as their new lead vocalist. He stayed with them until February 2013, when he resigned from the band due to inactivity (specifically, he tried to encourage them to release an album within a window of time, only for them to not work on the album at all beyond the demo track of "Garden of Shadows"). As things currently stand, the band have been looking for a new singer since February 2013, but there has been no more information about that at the time of writing. I personally suspect the band is likely to go on hiatus soon, if they haven't unofficially done that yet, but, as that is not based on any solid fact, I cannot say with any certainty how the band can come back from the loss of Todd. I've actually been tempted to send in a demo tape of myself singing some Crimson Glory stuff, although I am certain I'd never get the actual gig myself, since my voice is a lot more like Matt Barlow than Midnight.
The history behind this boxset is going to be of interest to people who aren't following the history of the band. See, this boxset was not authorised by the members of Crimson Glory: in fact, the band went so far as to encourage their fans not to purchase it, since they would not get paid for any purchases of it. The boxset was put together by the label Metal Mind Productions in 2010, at a limited quantity of 1000 copies (which are numbered: my copy is number 929, if anyone is curious) and with all of the albums remastered. At the time of purchasing the boxset, I was not aware of this bit of information and so was rather surprised to discover this. Considering that Crimson Glory are unlikely to visit the UK on tour at the moment, however, I didn't feel too bad about this. So, with all that history (finally) out of the way, let's examine the boxset itself.
In terms of the packaging, the boxset itself is not that impressive. It's pretty much a square box that's made of cardboard (I think) and is open on the right, if you have the front of the boxset facing you. I do get that it contains four albums (and a CD made up of the War Of The Worlds EP from 2000 and demos from the Astronomica album), but you'd expect better packaging for a boxset that costs a fair bit (I spent nearly £50 on my copy). The front cover is of five masks, Crimson Glory at the top in a fake silver writing and the title of the boxset underneath the masks. Some might consider that lazy, but I think it's a nice acknowledgement of the history of Crimson Glory, so to each their own. The back of the boxset is just the titles of the CDs and the note confirming which number of the limited edition 1000 copies you have. The CDs are fine until you get to the fifth one, which is just labeled Astonomica on the back of the set. On one hand, the original release of Astronomica had a special two disc edition for some live tracks with Midnight on vocals, so that's a fitting reason to name it like that, but it will confuse people who haven't heard of the band, since they'll assume it's a double disc album. I'd personally have put "War Of The Worlds EP" or "Extras" instead to minimise the confusion, since it's pretty much the contents of that EP and the second disc of Astronomica. It's a solid enough package, but you may want to have a backup system in place if you want to take the boxset with you anywhere, as you may find that everything has escaped in your bag when you get there (I would personally recommend putting it in a smaller section of your bag if you have a bag like that, but rubber bands across the open section should be fine).
The contents of the boxset are ultimately going to depend on how you like your albums to be stored. The albums are stored in digipacks with replications of the original album art on them (with the exception of the War Of The Worlds EP, which is stored in another copy with the Astronomica artwork) without extras in the digipack, but all the details (with the exception of the details of who recorded the album and whatnot for the debut) are inside the accompanied 60 page booklet (which is, indeed, 60 pages long: I just checked). Personally, I'd say that the addition of the booklet and having the details in that is a good idea for boxsets, since many don't even bother to include them, so you can't check you've heard the lyrics right from the set. However, I don't think it's an idea that's going to become the new standard, since it would be easier to just include them with the album in question most of the time. There are a few spelling errors in the booklet that should have been caught, but, on the whole, it's an enjoyable read. A few strange choices for additional reading material aside (there are some negative things about the band being included and the final two page article isn't even in English), it's a good way to learn more about the band: for instance, the reason Midnight got his nickname was apparently because he was constantly late for rehearsals. I only found out that bit of information from the booklet!
The sound on the albums will ultimately depend on how you like your music to sound. It's been given a digital remaster using a 24-bit process (in other words: it's louder than the originals, so it can stand up to modern albums fairly well), but, to the best of my knowledge, it's tastefully done, as it's not so loud that you'll hurt your ears listening to it. The guy who did the remaster job isn't named (another credit I've just realised is missing: no information about who worked on remastering the set!), but I hope he gets more work, since I think he did a great job! As for the albums themselves, if you liked them before the remaster, you'll only not like them now if you're not fond of remastered albums. I personally would say that the general consensus regarding which are Crimson Glory's best albums is accurate, since their first two albums are really good and are definitely worth picking up. The other two aren't bad and do have some enjoyable tracks (I'm really fond of "Song For Angels" from Strange and Beautiful and "New World Machine" from Astronomica), but, if you skip them, you'd not really be missing too much.
So, if you can get a copy of this boxset relatively cheaply and always wanted to check out Crimson Glory, it's worth picking it up. Just make sure you give their stuff a quick listen first, as it's not going to be something you'll be wanting to purchase and regret later...
Overall rating: 8.5/10
While most fans will not need to get a copy of this, for a person wanting to be introduced to Crimson Glory, this is a great purchase. If the packaging had been improved, I'd struggle to have any complaints to make against this boxset!
