ROAD SALT ONE

Pain of Salvation have now managed to stray as far away from Progressive Metal as seemingly possible... and into some poor American Rock band, with a few progressive tendencies thrown in here and there.

Gildenlöw's voice is still as impressive as ever, but it almost seems as though Hallgren (guitar) seems to constantly want to be poor version of Hendrix throughout various songs. Repetitive riffs throughout songs all being varying between 2-5 minutes - but the sluggish pace of album makes the 52 minute runtime seem a whole lot longer.

All I can put it down to is the entire band possibly having creative differences, and all wanting to add their own 'thing' to the band. The result is a mish-mash of different genres and a frustratingly dull album

The opening song 'No Way' is actually quite an okay song, not wonderful, but it could definitely be a B-side on their 'The Perfect Element I' album (my personal favourite), but then you have a whole 5 more songs to hear the next remotely prog song, however, it's not progressive metal, but something you'd hear on a Mr. Bungle album.

Then we move onto 'Darkness of mine', by now I can feel my eyes blinking slower and slower as each agonizing second passes by. The rest of the songs troddle on, and we have to wait until half way through the final track before hearing something Progressive Metal sounding, before it winds back down to the albums consistently boring pace.

This is by far their weakest attempt yet in my opinion, and it's unfortunate because I thought they'd possibly 'do a Dream Theater', work out what their fans want and bring out a very decent album. However, it unfortunately seems to be the opposite.