Crimson Glory

Crimson Glory's first album came out on Par Records, a small independent label in Florida. Bassist Jeff Lords has described Par as a local company run by a man and his wife, and says the deal came from demos the band had recorded at Morrisound Recording's first studio in Tampa. A promotional biography that Roadrunner Records sent out in 1986 has the band entering Morrisound in late 1984, with Jim Morris and Tom Morris then leading them to Par. According to Lords, every song from those demos except "Lost Reflection" was recorded again for the album. The album was recorded at Morrisound in Tampa. Dan Johnson produced it for D.U.A.F. Productions, Jim Morris engineered it, and Mike Fuller mastered it at Fullersound in Miami. The sleeve lists five members, Midnight on vocals, Jon Drenning on lead guitar, Ben Jackson on rhythm guitar, Lords on bass and Dana Burnell on drums, and credits all eight songs jointly to Drenning, Lords and Midnight. Emulator and Synclavier parts were written and played by Peter Abood, Drenning and Lex Macar, with Macar programming the Synclavier and Jim Morris the Emulator. Lords counts "Lost Reflection" among the pieces Midnight had written on acoustic guitar before he joined the band. The front cover shows a chrome mask between two red roses, and the back a photograph of the five in silver masks. Lords recalls that hiding their faces won the band magazine covers, but that the full-face masks of those early days hid every expression and made the stage very hot. He also says Par sold the rights to Roadrunner as soon as the album was finished, and Par's own inner sleeve already thanks everyone at Roadrunner Records. Roadrunner's European LP (RR 9655) was among the new albums on offer to British shops by early November 1986, according to Music Week, and Roadrunner issued a CD (RR 349655) in 1987. In 2018 Ben Jackson said the band had felt, even while recording, that they were making something special.