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▓█▌▐█▌  ▓▀    ▀▀ ▓▀   ▀▓    ▀▀▀    ██▓ ██ ▀▀               ▀  █▌       ▓ ▀▀▀▀ ▀ ▐█▓ ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ ▓██▄█▀ ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀   ▀▀▀▀▀▀ ▌▀ ░▓█▓░ ▀█▄                ▓▐█▀▀                      ░▓█▓░ ░█▓░░  ▓                      ▓        ▓░▓█░  ░▓▄█████▄░   ▄ ▄  ▓▄██████▄░  ░▐██▀▀▀▀███▓░ ▀▓▀ ▀▓▀ ░███▀▀▀▀██▄▓ ▀▀▀   ▀▀▀▀▀▀  ▀▀▀▀▀   ▀▀▀ ███  ████▀    ▄▀▀▄▄█████▄▄ ▄▄█████▄▄▀▀▄   ▀████   ██  ██   ▀██▄▐▄  ■ ▄██▀▀ ▀██▄ ▄ ▄██▀ ▀▀██▄ ■ ▄ ▄██▌   ▐█▓  ░▓▄   ▀██▄▀▓█▄▄▄█▀▀ ▄ ▄▓▓▄ ▐█▌ ▌ ▀▓▀ ▐▓▓▌ ▄▓▓▄ ▄ ▀▀▓▄▄░▄██▀   ▄▀      ▓░▓▄███   ▐▀ ▀▓▀ ▀▀ ▄██▀ ▀██▄ ▀▀ ▀▓▀  ▀███▄ ▓▓        ▄██▀▓   ■ ▀▄▀ ▀▄▀ ■   ░▀███░       ▓███▓     ░░ ▐▌ ▐▌     ░███▓      ███▌░  ▀ ▀ ███▓    ▐██▀ ▀███░   ██▌  Artist...: Crimson Glory ░▐██▌  ░▐██   Album....: Strange and Beautiful  ░██▌░ ▓▐██   Year.....: 2006  ▓▐██▓ ▓▐██   Rel.Date.: 2020-03-28  ░▐██▓  ▐██   Genre....: Heavy Metal   ██▌░ ░ ██▌  Label....: Metal Mind Productions   ██▌    ▐██  Source...: CD  ▐██    ░▐██▌ Type.....: Remastered ▐██▌░  ▓▄████ Quality..: VBR, 44.1kHz, Joint Stereo ████▌░ ▓▄████ ████▌░   ███▌░  ███▓   ▐██░░▀█▄░         ▓█▌  ███  ▀██▓ ▓█▄        ▄█▀ ▓██▀    ▓██▄ ▓▓▀▄    ▄▓▀  ▄██▓░     ██▌    ▓  ▄▄▄ ░    ▐██▓░       ██▌    ░ ░▀▄▓▓█▀█▄▀▀░     ▓██░         ░██░     ░ ░▄ ▄▄██▐▓▓█▄░▄█▌██▀▀ ▀░ ░ ▄▄▀▀█░░▐█░      ▄  ▐█▌░    ░▄▄▀▓▓███▀▄░ ▓▄▄█▌▓▓█ ▓█░   ▀░▀  ██     ▀▀▀ ░█▓▄▄▄█▀░ ▓█        ░▐█▌    ░█▌▐▓ ▓▄▄░ ▌         ░█░     ▄  ▐▓▓▀▀▀░▓█▄▄░       ░░▄█▄ ▄ ██▄ ▀░▀ ▀█░▄▄▄  ▄█░▄▀▀▄▀▀▄░▀▀▄       ▀▀████████▀░ ▀▀░  ▄█▓░░░░▀░░█ █▄█▓        ▐█░▀██▀ ▄█▓░░░ ▐ ▄ ░▓█▄        ▓  ▐▌  ▐ ▄█▀█░ ░  ░ ▄ ▀█▄▓█░    ░▓▓▀▀░▄ ▌▓   ■░▒ ░ ▄ ▐▀▀▓▄█▓░░ ░ ░ ▄█▀█░█▐▓▌▀▄         ░▀█▌  ▓▬ ▓▀▓ ░▄▄▓▀▓░      ░▀█░▀█▄░░  ░█░ ██ █░▀█▐▌       ░▓░░▐▌   ▌ ░░■  ▄█▐  ▐       ▓▓▓█░▓█▄▄█░  █▓█▓▌░ ▀  ▄         ▓░▓ █▓▐░▌ ▓ ░▓▓ ▓▐▒▄░░▐▓█  ▌         █▀▀░▐▀░█▀▓  ▐▌ █▌    ▀░▀     ▄ ▐░▌░▐█ █▌ ▓   ░█░░█▀ ▐▓▐░ ▀▄▄▀▀▌░   ▄▄███▐████▄▓  ▌        █  ░   █ ─▀▀▀█▓░█▄▌  ▐░▐░ ▄▄▄░██  ░ ░ ░▓░  ▐▌▓▄▌▓▓▌▓▐▓█▀  ■                ▄ ▌     ▀█▄█▌ █▌▐▓░█▓ ▀ ░░░ ░▓█▄█  █▓▓▓▓▓█▄▓▓▐▓  ░        █  ░  ▄ ▀ ░  ░  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▓█░▓▄▄▄████▄▓▀ ▄▄▓ ▄▄▄░█▌ ░▄▀▀▄█▓░ ▓▓█░████▓███░██▀▓▓███▓ ▓██▓▐█▌ ███▄▄   ▐███▄ ▓▄█▀▀  ▐█▄█▀  ▄▀▀░ ▄█▀░ ░ ▓████████▐██████▓█▓ ▓█ ██  ░█▓ ▐█▄▓██▄██▄▐█▌░   ▐██▌▓▄█▀▓    ▄▄▀▀▀▀▄▄▄ ▓██▓▓▓▀▄████▐░███ █░█▌▄ ▐█▀██▀ ██▀   ▀███▄▄█▓ ███████▄▓▀▀▀▀▄▓  ░▄██▓ ▓ ▓██▓▀▄█████▓ ▄▄▀▀▓▄▄█▄▐█▄▄▓▄▄▄▄▄▄▄░▄░░░▄▄▀▄▄▀█░▄▄▄▄▄▄▐█▌ ▄██▀▄▄▄▄▄▄ ██░████ ▓     ░  ▓██░                        ▓█▄█▀     ▓██████            ▀▀▄▓                      ▓▀▀▀       ▓ █    1. Strange and Beautiful 6:17 2. Promised Land 5:22 3. Love and Dreams 5:29 4. The Chant 3:45 5. Dance on Fire 5:27 6. Song for Angels 5:19 7. In the Mood 5:55 8. Starchamber 7:28 9. Deep Inside Your Heart 5:14 10. Make You Love Me 4:05 11. Far Away 4:44 ------ 59:05 Ahh, Strange and Beautiful. One of the more maligned entries in the progressive metal canon, brought forth as yet another example of a formerly-powerful band brought to its knees at the feet of commercialism. It doesn't take much to get metalheads down the "sellout!" rabbit hole, and the album's title does it no favors; the number of times I've heard the "not beautiful, but definitely strange" puns grows ever staggering. To be sure, the music on Strange and Beautiful bears little resemblance to that of its predecessor, the truly towering achievement of Transcendence. Consequently--let's get this out of the way up front--if you go into this album expecting to hear music in the vein of its predecessors, you're going to emerge quite confused by the experience. I certainly was when I first became a fan of the band--my first pass through this stuff, I found "Deep Inside Your Heart" to be a high-quality power ballad and little else to be worthwhile. Judged as a successor to Transcendence, this album is indeed a miserable failure; the decision to turn away from the landmark powerprog stylings of Crimson Glory's past work still stands as a bad one. But, like so many albums that fall into the "sellout" black hole, Strange and Beautiful is actually quite misunderstood. For one thing, while there is a huge stylistic shift at play and it suspiciously coincides with the shift to a major label, the shift is not an inauthentic one--it actually, in retrospect, isn't surprising when you consider the band members at the time. Second guitarist Ben Jackson left after Transcendence, and bandleader Jon Drenning apparently seemed content to let Jackson take Crimson Glory's signature dual-lead sound with him, opting to take sole six-string duties here. Drummer Dana Burnell, who only sort of played on Transcendence anyway, also left and was replaced with Ravi Jakhotia, who a) isn't a drum machine and b) has a much different style than that of the parts the Transcendence drum machine (or, on the first album, Burnell himself) was playing. Midnight, for his part, was always more of a folk singer than a metal singer at heart--just look at his subsequent solo output. Take the shift in personnel, throw in the desire to try something a bit new, and you end up getting a mishmash of everyone's ideas that doesn't quite please anyone. In later times, Drenning went on record to say Strange and Beautiful was effectively a Midnight solo album, and Midnight himself didn't even stay in the band long enough to even go on the following tour. Ahh, the dangers of compromise. So, what results from that compromise? It's actually kind of hard to pin down what Strange and Beautiful is trying to do, which is why we see so much reflexive snickering at the first word of the title or lazy labeling of the music as "glam," just because anyone accused of selling out in 1991 gets lumped in with "glam." I listen to a lot of "glam metal" and don't view the term as a pejorative in the slightest, and so I wouldn't at all mind if that was the style here...but it isn't. Sure, we've got songs called "In The Mood" and "Make You Love Me," and the lyrics of those two songs read as glam, but that's about as far as it goes. Nothing on here is even as glam as Transcendence's "Lonely," though the single, "The Chant," kind of tries. "The Chant" was written by outside writers, which is the one thing about this album that is kind of sellout-y, but whatever overt pop appeal the song has (mostly in the stop-start guitar riffs), Midnight's edgy delivery pulls it out of the glam arena, for better or worse. The man was many things, but there was nothing glam about Midnight. If this music is not the glam it's accused of being, and it's not the band's previously pioneered powerprog, then what is it? The sound on Strange and Beautiful reaches in several directions--something that is, in its own strange (heh, there it is) way, more "progressive" than the fairly unified, monolithic sound of the prior two discs. In one sense, its more hard rock-oriented sound is a nod backward to the '70s, as if they've traced the famed "In Dark Places" riff all the way back to its roots in Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir." But the record is oddly forward-looking as well, with the hard rock guitars, soft/loud dynamics, and Midnight's aggressive delivery sounding ahead of the alternative curve. If they sold out, they sold out to 1993, not 1988. Whether the album looks back to the '70s, forward to the mid-'90s, or even touches on the band's metallic past, the one unifier is Midnight's vocals. No, they aren't the crazy wails we got on Crimson Glory or Transcendence, though he's still quite high-pitched at times and overall admirably rangy. Still, even taken out of the mystical realm of power metal, Midnight sounds as otherworldly as ever here. While retrospective focus on Midnight tends to revere him for his role in popularizing high-pitched wails and overall prowess, the man was really never all that much of a technician, just an incredibly emotive folk singer who happened to be able to hit high notes cleanly too. And so that aura of mystery that surrounds the first two albums stubbornly persists here, even though the music below it is considerably more modest in scope and ambition. This has the effect of pulling everything into a vaguely psychedelic mode. Beyond that, the thing that really saves Strange and Beautiful is that Drenning and Midnight are both great at what they do, and while the overall musical direction here isn't optimal, neither of them has run out of ideas or passion. In a lot of ways, the progressive edge of Crimson Glory is still there, as the song structures are still anything but straightforward in many cases, especially the title track and "Starchamber." There's even some world music influence courtesy of Jakhotia's sometimes tribal-sounding approach to drumming, dovetailing with Midnight's folk instincts. The singer's delivery, as noted before, is impassioned as ever and, due to the nature of the material, even more hypnotic than before. While his highest register is missed somewhat, songs of this nature don't really call for it anyway. Drenning's guitar leads actually sound like guitars on this album, which is nice after the weird, flangy leads on Transcendence, and he gets more room to wield the axe than you might think given the album's reputation. The title track and the excellent "Deep Inside Your Heart" both have great solos. Outside of solos, though, his presence is more subdued; some catchy riffing pops up here and there, but it's devoid of the same inspiration as the band's previous material. Again, this isn't the sort of music that needs five good riffs a song, so if you don't go in looking for the Transcendence sound, you don't feel it as much as you'd think, but it is still a loss nonetheless. Jakhotia's drumming, as noted before, has some world music elements at times; otherwise, he's competent but relatively faceless here. The only other notable thing about his performance is really that his snare is almost obnoxiously loud here, and I say that as somebody who generally likes loud snares. Bassist Jeff Lords, always the band's forgotten member, has his usual tasteful lines that subtly move the songs in positive directions, and he is mixed quite high. I feel like I've spent the majority of this review fiercely defending Strange and Beautiful, to the point where I may be running the risk of overshooting my target. Make no mistake, it is a big step down. This is music that never aspires to reach the heights of Transcendence, and so it never does, no matter how well-executed it is. The production is better than previous albums, but the instruments still sound frustratingly hazy, but that kind of meshes with Midnight's voice anyway, so maybe it's just as well. "Dance on Fire" is easily the worst thing the band ever did, a song with zero good ideas, a complete lack of flow between sections, and a very pitchy vocal performance. Acoustic ballad "Far Away" is fine but completely unnecessary on an album that already has "Deep Inside Your Heart" and the piano-led "Song For Angels." Discouraging weaknesses, to be sure. But Dream Theater fans have the luxury to dismiss Falling Into Infinity (a similarly-misunderstood release) because they have twelve (okay, eleven...we'll forget When Dream and Day Unite is a thing) other releases of DT-brand music to enjoy. Given the comparative brevity of Crimson Glory's run, it's wiser here to try to meet this album on its terms, because frankly it was Midnight's swan song when it came to metal or even rock music. If you go in without the burden of the band's past and just want to hear one of prog metal's most legendary vocalists sing good material, the album delivers pretty consistently. Perhaps Drenning's comment is right, then--the album is best appreciated as a Midnight album rather than one that has to carry the burden of the Crimson Glory back catalog on its slumping shoulders. As a Midnight album, it works precisely because it's hard not to get caught up in his trance, whether on the touching ballads, the psychedelia of the extended pieces, or the alternative-prog-glam-pop-metal hybrids. Such awkward genre mashups are indeed a strange place to go from the, er, transcendent achievements of the band's past, but with Midnight at the helm and plenty of good Drenning ideas behind him, Strange and Beautiful lives up to both halves of its title more often than not.                                                                                                     ▀▀░                                                                                                                ░▄▀                                  ▄█▀                                             ░▄           ░▐███░               ▀█░▄▄▄                    ▄░       ▀█░░                      ░           ▀▀░                                         ▄  ░                                          ▄     █          ▀                 ▄              ▄█▄ ▄ ██▄         ▀░▀     ▄         ▀                ▀░▀   ▀         ▀▀████████▀░                   ▀ ▄      ░                      ░░       ░▀██▀                    ▀██▄                ▄               ▐     ░      ░  █▀▄    ▐▓▓▌   █                    ▄   ▄▄       ░                    ▄▄▌█  ▄▄▓▓▓▀  ▄                      ▄ ▀   ████      ░                   ▐███▌  ░ ░                  ▄██▀     ▄▄██▄▄           ░           ▄▄███▄▄ ▄  ▓                         ▐▓▓▌  ░   ▓████▄        ▀          ▀    ▓█████▓  ▀ ▄                           ▀▓▓▓▄▄   ▐▓███ ▌                       ▌█████      ▀██▄   ▄                ░▄  ▀▀██▄▐████ ▌▐ ▌▓                ▓▐ ▌█▓███       ▐▓▓▌ ▀░▀           █    █  ░ ░▓▐████▄▌▐ ▌▌ ▌▌▐ ▌▐▄ ▐▐·▌▌▐▐ ▐ ▄█████    ▄▄▓▓▓▀                            ▓ ▓▐████ ▌▐ ▌▌ ▌▌▐ ▌▐▐▓▐▐ ▌▌▐▐ ▐ ▌█████ ▄█▓▀▀  ▄░ ░            ▄▄▄░      ▓     ░▐████▄▌▐▄▌▌▄▌▌▐ ▌▐▐▄▐▐▄▌▄▐▐▓▐▄▌█████ ▓     █               █████      ▐▄░   ▓▐████ ▌▐ ▌▌ ▌▌▐ ▌▐▐ ▐▐ ▌▌▐▐▓▐ ▌█████   ▓░   ▄         ▐▓    █▓███░    ▓▐█░▄▄  ▐████ ▌▐ ▌▌ ▌▌▐ ▌▐█ ▐▐ ▌▌▐▐ ▐ ▌█████    ▄██▄ ▀ ▄      █▌    █████▓   ██▀█▀▀   ▐█▓██ ▌▐ ▌▌ ▌▌▐ ▌▐▐ ▐▐ ▌▌▐▐ ▐ ▌███▓█   ▐█▓██▓   ▀██▄ ▀██▀   █████▓░    ▓█▌    ▐████▓▌▐▄▌▌▄▌▌▄ ▌▐▐▄▐▐▓▌▌▐▐▄▐▄▌█████   ▐████▌    ▐▓▓▌▓█▌   ▄█▓███▄░     ▐█▄▓  ▐████ ▌▐ ▌▌ ▌▌▐ ▌▐▐ ▐▐ ▌▌▐▐ ▐ ▀█▓███   ▐████▌ ▄▄▓▓▓▀  █▓  ████████▄▄▓ ▄█████▌ ▐████ ▌▐ ▌▌ ▌▌▐ ▌▐▐ ▐▐ ▌▌▐▐▓▐ ▌█████   ▓████▌░ ▄▄   ▄▄█▄▄ ██████████████████████████████▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄     █████  ░██▓████▓██▓▓██████ █░█████▄▀█▄░████████▄▄▄▄▄██████▓████████░██████▄▄▄▄▄███████░▄██░█░█████████ ▓██▀█████▓░░ ░ ░ ░ ░ ░ ░░░▓███▓█████ ████████▓ ▓██▓▐████▓ ▓██ █░███ █░██████▓ ███▓▄▀█▓ ▓ ▓█████▓███████ ▓███ ░▄▄▄▓████▓ ▓████████▓ ▓██████▓ ▓████▓