BE

Road Salt One got a lot of criticism as being "the end of Pain of Salvation" where a lot of progressive fans felt that they had gone mainstream and boring... To me, Be is a significantly worse album. I wanted to like Be. It's so experimental, different, and out-there, but as an album it just doesn't hit the mark for me. It's basically a self-absorbed, pseudo high-minded attempt to make a profound and unique statement, but as a musical album it comes off as boring and frustrating.

No doubt Pain of Salvation has released some epic progressive masterpieces, arguably the best progressive metal ever, but Be is often "proggy" for the sake of being proggy rather than to accomplish a specific goal, i.e. make good music. Honestly the only bright spot on this entire album for me is Imago (Homines Partus). It's got a very catchy hook combined with interesting rhythms and melodies and while the lyrics are slightly cliche (They can be summed up as: People are becoming progressively selfish, greedy douche bags and they're destroying nature), they're still quite interesting in the context of the song. Iter Impius is the only other standout solid song. It's a very soft, melodically beautiful song with some nice electric guitar solos during the middle section, but I can't help feeling like it wouldn't stand out on any other POS album. Besides those two... Good luck. I couldn't find a lot of true value besides bits or pieces scattered throughout the rest of the album.

This is an album hardcore POS fans listen to, but I can't imagine many people outside of that truly enjoying it.