The CRIMSON GLORY discography...

The only one I have heard is the one I own - Transcendence. I bought it the year it came out at a video store. Why a video store in the 80's sold CD's is beyond me, this is way before the Blockbuster days. Anyway, I bought it because 2 friends were raving about it and I'm glad I picked it up. havent listened to it in years but now my interest is up so I'll have to dump it to the iPod and give it a fresh listen.

I saw Strange & Beautiful when it was brand new but wasn't impressed with the cover so for some reason I passed. Glad I did if they changed their sound on it.

I like all of their albums to varying degrees, with the debut and Transcendence being my favorites. I've only heard a couple of songs from Strange & Beautiful, but what I've heard didn't sound horrible to me.

I actually like Astronomica quite a bit as well, it's a pretty solid album with some great vocals (albeit not as great as Midnight's). Crimson Glory's power metal material ranks near the top of the genre for me, along with Vicious Rumors, Metal Church, and a few others.

The debut is unstoppable, especially with 'Dream Dancer' as the bonus track.

I finally picked up the debut with the bonus track. I can't really add much to what was already said about it. I just wish I had gotten it sooner. Better late than never !

Thus endeth the Crimson Glory discography but I figured I'd finish things up with an entry detailing their post 1999 activities....

The ASTRONOMICA line up of CG went "on hiatus" as soon as their touring commitments for the album were over. So much for Drenning's statements at the time that ASTRONOMICA was the beginning of Crimson Glory's "next phase" and that they were in it for the long haul, there would be many more albums, blah de blah de blah.

Over the next several years the members of C.G. toyed around with various solo endeavors, including Midnight's perennially-delayed SAKADA solo album...



...and guitarist Ben Jackson's creatively-named Ben Jackson Group.


The Crimson Glory band members would occasionally show up at each other's solo gigs to jam onstage together, and around 2003 they began reaching out to Midnight about a possible reunion of the original lineup. After numerous stops and starts, the band announced its comeback in late 2005. Midnight was back in the band, which had signed to the Greek metal label Black Lotus Records and a new album -- entitled METATRON, LUCIFER AND THE DIVINE CHAOS - was supposedly in the works. Black Lotus also promised such additional goodies as a live album of vintage CG performances, a box set of rarities and spruced-up reissues of the band's back catalog.

Crimson Glory appeared at the 2006 Rockwave Festival in Greece to make their reunion "official." Unfortunately, only a month or two after the announcement, Black Lotus Records went bankrupt and closed its doors. Judging from the live clips from Rockwave that are available on YouTube, that may have actually been a good thing cuz the band sounded pretty awful at the time.

Ack. If you can make it through this entire video you're stronger than I am.

Midnight was arrested in January of 2007 for driving under the influence of alcohol, which aggravated the band's already strained relationship with him. Four days after his arrest, Crimson Glory announced that they were parting ways with Midnight yet again and fulfilled a few concert dates with Wade Black in his place. Midnight's reaction was to make a statement to the press wishing his former bandmates good luck, and telling them to "break a leg... or two." Ouch. The band went on hiatus yet again shortly thereafter.

Midnight tragically passed away in July of 2009 of a stomach aneurysm, which prompted a tribute set at that year's ProgPower Festival in Atlanta. Crimson Glory performed their set with an assortment of guest singers including Zak Stevens of Savatage, Ronny Munroe of Metal Church, and Lance King of Pyramaze. One of those guest vocalists was Todd LaTorre, brother of Jon Oliva's Pain guitarist Matt LaTorre. Todd's amazing vocal similarity to Midnight led to his being officially named the new Crimson Glory singer in May of 2010.



The "new" Crimson Glory made the European festival rounds in 2011 and are supposedly still at work on that ever-elusive new studio album.

Just to complicate things even further, Todd LaTorre was recently tapped to join the members of Queensryche in their new retro-minded project Rising West and is currently performing a series of shows with them in which they play classic tracks from the Ryche's early days. LaTorre made a statement to Blabbermouth.net telling Crimson Glory fans not to worry and that his involvement with Rising West does not mean he's no longer a member of C.G., but I guess time will tell.

And that brings us up to date. For a band with only four studio albums under its belt, Crimson Glory has somehow managed to keep fans intrigued for over a quarter of a century and even though they're not the most prolific band in the world, being a Crimson Glory follower is certainly never boring!!

Great thread!!!! Hopefully La Torre will be able to make albums with both Rising West (Queensryche?) and Crimson Glory. My guess is that if the remaining original members of Queensryche get the name, Todd will be full time Queensryche as the tour a lot. If Queensryche decides to have a "cooling down" extended break, then Todd will do both.

Are those clips a good representation of the bands' sound. Ben Jackson Group is okay, but the cover once seen made me question the purchase

BearOnUnicycle wrote:

Are those clips a good representation of the bands' sound. Ben Jackson Group is okay, but the cover once seen made me question the purchase

What little I've heard of the Ben Jackson Group stuff was decent enough but nothing that made me wanna run out and buy the CDs.

As for that album cover... All I can say is that Ben must be trying to cop some of that "look how studly a middle aged guitar guy can be" vibe ala George Lynch.

I found the "Lonely" single on ebay a little while ago. The first and last time I fork out $55 for 3 tracks.

Still not sure if it was worth it...

Trasncendance is their best work ever

I have both of the Midnight solo records and to be honest 'Sakada' has been a little tough to get into. Something about his voice was not working for me the last time I played it, but I will give it another chance still.

Little collection of facts about the first one. The first record is extremely elusive:




Initially it was to be something like a Midnight fan club only sort of deal, and you could only order it from his site at the time, very limited pressing. Mine is signed. It is an acoustic record with 8 tracks and if you like the idea of that sort of thing with Midnight singing, it's very very good. Very enjoyable even though I am not often in the right mood. Midnight is on vocals and guitar, and originally, Rand Burkey (ex-Atheist) was going to be on the second guitar, but that fell through and a local peer of mine, Bobby Kovaks (Kovaks has done sound for some SKYLINER shows and he always spins old CG and other good stuff in the venue between bands), handled the second guitar and some keys. This one was way back in 2001. I believe CG was still discussing a new album at that time also.

C.G. has put a sneaky peek of their work-in-progress album w/Todd LaTorre on YouTube... tune is called "Garden of Shadows"... what ya all think?

I can definitely see why Queensryche hired the guy, he has his Tate-ism's down pat. Nice arrangement.

Very good tune ! LaTorre's vocals sound great.

I don't like this new tune. It's what I suspected: the music is good but the vocals are boring! It's the most boring song I have ever heard from CG (although I didn't listen to S&B all the way through).

Hmm..new track is interesting; Dunno how I feel about the vocals though..

Stender wrote:

Hmm..new track is interesting; Dunno how I feel about the vocals though..

Unfortunately, now that LaTorre is full-time Queensryche we will never know how a CG album w/him on vox might have turned out.

They can always hire Tate......wonder if you'd recognize him in the mask (do they still do that?) The vest would give him away I think ? The maks would have to be plastic though, if it was metal it would be heavy to fit on his big over inflated head.

Back in 2020, I made a video where I discussed Transcendence in a video on YouTube.



A year and a half ago, I discussed Strange and Beautiful on my YouTube channel in my series Catalog Cripplers, where I discuss albums known for having harmful effects on the careers of metal bands.