THE PERFECT ELEMENT - PART 1

On Pain of Salvation's third they fully established themselves as a progressive metal force to be reckoned with. The album is well-written, diverse and it has some true highlights. Only, there's too few of them.

The album starts very strongly with 3 hard rocking prog-metal songs. As in most prog-metal there's some layers of cheese to bite through but you get used to that after a couple of listens. The Faith No More inspired Ashes offers a solid highpoint but from there on the ride goes quickly downhill. The emphasis shifts too much to the vocals, not that Daniel Gildenlöw's vocals can be criticized in any way, but I lack the daft musicianship and inventive songwriting of the opening songs.

In fact most of the song-writing restricts itself to extended ballad formats, of the rather sentimental kind I must say. There are some heavier prog sections like King Of Loss that deserve our attention but overall, my amazement at the highly acclaimed masterpiece standing of this album only increases as it proceeds. Luckily it ends on a high note with the album closer.

The Perfect Element is a good album that could have been excellent if it had more highlights and less average balladry. Really, there are few bands that can go on unpunished for 72 minutes, and PoS certainly can't here.