Biography
The Crimson Armada, a five-piece group based in Westerville, Ohio, assembled in 2007 and quickly ascended within extreme metal circles. Saud Ahmed handled vocals and keyboards, Dan Hatfield and Josh Jardin both played guitar, Chris Yates covered bass and vocals, and David Puckett sat behind the drums. Their aim was to blend every subgenre of extreme music into a single sound while threading spiritual themes through the lyrics, deliberately sidestepping the fixation on gore and blasphemy that defined much death and black metal. The band spent its first year tracking demos and sharing stages with the Black Dahlia Murder and It Prevails before entering a period of inactivity. Local scene pressure prompted a 2008 reunion that produced the EP Behold the Architect and led to a deal with Metal Blade. Guardians, the quintet’s debut full-length, arrived on that label in July 2009. Artery Recordings became their new home in 2011 and issued the follow-up Conviction, an album leaning more heavily into metalcore, before the year ended. In 2012 Saud Ahmed revealed he would devote his attention to his side project the Holy Guile, effectively ending the Crimson Armada.
Albums