Road Salt One [CD]

Yes, you need to be open mind to listen to what Daniel wanted to give us this time.
Especially those who only liked PoS because of the power "noise".
This album is more power "beautiful, touching and simply honest" besides of course the quality of all musicians.
I'm not sure if it is better but I can assure you that is not worse than all the other albums.
And I hope this album is available to more people than the others because sometimes I remember myself only listening to radio stations a few years ago and I didn't even had a clue about what I was missing not knowing Pain of Salvation. So, please, let Daniel in...

Pain of salvation are a band who keep on moving with their sound, while still keeping their melodic identity. This album (and the next one along with the EP) feature a vibe described as "the 70's on steroids" by Daniel Gildenlow, the group's vocalist guitarist and song writer.

Personally I'm really liking the direction and the production of the album, there's enough interesting little twists and oddities as well as lyrics that need thinking about! It's not as "heavy" as some of their previous offerings but there's a strong rock/blues feel to the whole thing.

First of all let me make it clear that I don't listen to metal at all and that is why I don't share the frustration of many disappointed fans of that genre. However, I listen to many different calmer styles of music and I have gone through a lot of new albums lately. It seems like many people highly recommending new progressive rock acts (I am not calling this album that and in general it makes no difference to me how things are called) should listen to hundreds of classics from the 70s because that is where most of the progressive rock greatness lives. Obviously we do get Porcupine Trees these days but they are so rare. I think that Pain Of Salvation knows how strong and rare this album is and that is why even on cd artwork they have divided songs to side A and B, as it used to be done on records. The entire graphic interphase of front and back of the cd cover takes us back to early 1970s. That was the intention of the band and it must be so heartbreaking and disappointing to them to have received such a low overall score from his listeners who obviously must be looking at this work as different from what they were expecting and hoping for.

It is so refreshing to listen to this album where it is easy to right away recognize a super solid and specific style of a band, great sound and amazing talent. This music truly breaks boundaries. The overall mood of this album to me falls between Led Zeppelin III, King Crimson's In The Wake Of Poseidon, The Cult's Love, and Black Sabbath's and Counting Crows' debut albums. All great albums and imagine listening to them all together at the same time. I see Pain Of Salvation often listed under progressive metal so I was never personally interested in them but I am so glad that I gave Road Salt One a try. To me this is just a great rock album with songs going through different moods and textures, some of them being quite amazing. The sound of this album is excellent. It has a lot of depth and it feels so full, unstructured and unobstructed. You don't need the best stereo system to feel like you are right in front of these guys playing live. At times the sound comes across dense and traditional as from an old Black Sabbath or The Cult album but then when the acoustic ambient moment comes upon us it almost feels like this music grows in dimension and every detail of sound becomes crystal clear. Many songs contain loose structure and an acoustic envelope of sound. Daniel Gildenlow's voice is amazing. It sounds a lot like the space between the voices of David Coverdale and Carlo van Putten. I really love calm emotional passages he is so capable of. Obviously, coming back from the metal background he is quite capable of the opposite end as well, but these moments rarely come to expression here.

Sisters is my favorite song of this album. Wow. I mean, what a concept. Such powerful and honest and intriguing lyric addressed to a girlfriend or wife revealing one's, once upon a party time, feelings towards her own sister would probably come out of Sweden much easier than from many places. It actually comes from somewhere deep inside... It is a gorgeous piano based song with an amazing acoustic sound including the string section. It is a simple beautiful ballad truly one of a kind. Innocence on the other hand is a very structured song. It contains the most interesting vocal harmonies and it is probably musically most complex. It has this Alice In Chains at its best quality to it with a phenomenal drum beat and dark ambient ending. Where It Hurts is probably many people's favorite song here. It contains heavier and calm passages of varying time signatures with a brilliant middle moment of truth. Something about the structure of this song and one of its vocal parts remind me of Since I've Been Loving You, one of my favorite Led Zeppelin's songs. Road Salt is another calm ballad during which Daniel Gildenlow's voice resembles David Coverdale's a lot. Sleeping Under The Stars adds so much texture to this album. It is a song performed in its entirety by Daniel alone including all backing vocals and vocal harmonies he was able to create. This is the song that completely reminds me of my favorite King Crimson's early albums. It is the inclusion of unusual instruments like balalaika, mandolin and lute which make this song so interesting to me. There is no guitar on it at all. Linoleum is a two part song and the later part is truly magnificent and contains one of the most interesting vocal harmonies on the album. This is the loudest and heaviest song of the album. Of Dust is another great mellow acoustic song and it is exactly the mixture of both environments and how well they agree together that makes me love this album...more and more.