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Pain Of Salvation - Scarsick CD (album) cover

SCARSICK

Pain Of Salvation

 

Progressive Metal

3.23 | 659 ratings

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OpethGuitarist
Prog Reviewer
1 stars Hogwash.

I'm just curious, was Krystoffer the only songwriter in this band, because he must have had some type of control, this isn't the same band at all. This is some of the most uninspiring material I've heard since Octavarium. It appears that PoS have also attempted to fuse many styles of different bands into their own sound, and as we know, that rarely if ever works well. Rather than being true to their sound and the direction they appeared to be going after the release of BE, perhaps one of the most pretentious albums in the history of music, we see PoS try to become a fuse of several of today's top radio acts. It isn't a pretty picture.

We hear influences of all across the rock and metal scene, and I'm almost glad that the band has no intentions of coming to America to tour; I have no desire to hear them play this drivel in concert. Bear in mind that this has absolutely nothing to do with any of the bands political ideology and 100% to do with the "art" they put on this record. Judging from a purely musical standpoint, it's a rehash of ideas already done and easily the worst record from PoS. What makes it worse is the obviously rudimentary understanding this band has for any world matters and serves only to make OHBTCL worse, almost invalidating its shocking message which was delivered with much more artistic and musical vision.

The angst filled and boring melodies of Scarsick, the rap metal of Spitfall. The Tool stolen ideas of Cribcaged (whining baby), the radio friendly and absolutely awful America, the laughable and quirky Disco Queen (which sounds even worse than you'd expect), the rejected material for TPE (Kingdom of loss), the 4 minute riff that never changes in Mrs. Modern Mother Mary, the radio metal sound of Idiocracy, along with the attempt to rip off Opeth's style from their terrible radio release of Grand Conjuration (heavy chords and whisper effects - credit to Geck0), the catchy but ultimately unfulfilling Flame to Moth, the slow and uninspiring Enter Rain (which makes the closers of TPE and Remedy Lane look even better). All in all, it's unoriginal, boring, and useless drivel.

One begins to wonder if maybe Daniel wasn't the brains behind the whole operation, and that it was actually Krystoffer who was the gifted songwriter. On top of this, it's easily the worst vocal performance in Gildenlow's career. Daniel is an eccentric guy, so maybe he's due for one hiccup. We can only hope that the next album is better and heads in a different direction than this.

OpethGuitarist | 1/5 |

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