Edge of Thorns is the seventh studio album by the American heavy metal band Savatage, released on April 6, 1993, by Atlantic Records.
"[3] The opening piano riff to the title track was used extensively in the MTV reality series The Real World: San Francisco during scenes involving the hospitalization of Pedro Zamora.
In a contemporary review for Rock Hard magazine, where Edge of Thorns had been elected Album of the Month, Matthias Breusch wrote that Savatage had "not lost a pinch of their compositional potential and energy" and praised Criss Oliva's guitar playing; he complimented new singer Zak Stevens' "powerful, energetic voice", which was "cleverly adapted to the melodic lines" of the new songs, although he missed Jon Oliva's "crazy screams".
In his opinion, the new material fits well the "less bombastic delivery" of new singer Stevens, who does "not have the emotional range that Oliva showed on Gutter Ballet and Streets".
[2] Canadian journalist Martin Popoff remarked how Edge of Thorns was "a raucous return to old Savatage vein", with "mountains of thirsty power riffs" and "an odd adherence to a goth past", mostly out of fashion in the alternative metal scene of the time.