Album Details

• Artist: Crimson Glory
• Album: Strange And Beautiful
• Label: Atlantic / Roadrunner (Reissue)
• Year of Release: 2006
• Original Release: 1991
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: solitaryman on 2008-05-28

This marks my first experience from the 80's hard rock/metal group Crimson Glory, who for some reason are dubbed "Progressive" by just about every bio and review I've come across for them. Frankly, on Strange and Beautiful, the prog is very low-key and the real title for the sound is somewhere between arena rock and hair metal, glam and punk. It takes elements from all and then uses some progressively technical guitar chops to take it one step ahead of that pack.

The title track is an awesome opener, using a mid-paced thumping rhythm as a platform for some wicked soloing by Jon Drenning. It is his work coupled with the emotive, power-packed and rather unique-sounding vocals of Midnight that make Strange and Beautiful a better-than-average affair. The songs are also very catchy and varied throughout, but the balladeering gets old after the 2nd or 3rd try. For ballad-lovers, however, songs like "Love and Dreams" and "Songs for Angels" will hit that soft spot in you with great accuracy. My personal favorites are the thrashy "Dance on Fire" and the 7 minute mini-epic "Starchamber". 

These guys remind me of Queensryche in that they seem to take the best sounds of 80's rock and metal and meld them into a progressive mold. Perhaps not as much as the Queens, but there's enough variety and innovative playing on Strange and Beautiful to keep their fans happy, as well as most prog rock fans, arena rock fans...hell, rock fans in general. As far as I know Crimson Glory's earlier work leaned more to the progressive side of rock, so perhaps I'm being unfair in criticising them for it. But if they earned fans due to one sound and then changed up drastically, the results could have been either fantastic or terrible. History is the judge, and they did go on to have more success, this album most likely being a platform for that. 

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