SILENCE OF ANOTHER KIND

Third album from this Swedish combo, that had such a promising start, but is definitely having problems confirming the high expectations raised from their debut album. If Timeloss was breaking new grounds openly mixing some trip hop into Scandinavian prog ambiances, Kallocain was a real deception, failing to go further in that direction, almost regressing a bit, the main flaw of the album is that past the energetic opening (atypical) track, the rest of the album was fairly eventless (nothing much happening), eventually rendering the album flat and a tad bit boring, and left us hoping for a better third effort, more in the line of Timeloss

Alas, SOAK takes much more after the dull Kallocain than the exciting Timeloss even if the opening track is again energetic and reminiscent of Timeloss or Anekdoten. The ill-titled Shame is easily the best and most adventurous track and puts to ..shame the rest of it. Then come two tracks (or is it three? Not sure ;-) that just glide by slowly like a sailboat on a lake during a windless dogdays of summer, dragging on endlessly, lazily, treading the same slow pace with Petronella 's good voices mixed a bit loud as it covers a bit the her husband's good drumming (the only good thing in Falling) while tracks like No Miracles border on the insufferably noisy Cure-type song.

One cannot say that the trip hop noodlings are absent from the album the Still Standing intro (one of the most interesting remaining track past the opener) and later on its climax, and the closing instrumental (if you can call it that) title track, but overall the ambiance of this album is much reminiscent of Landberk's less interesting albums (the middle two). Slightly more interesting than Kallocain, this will probably be the last Paatos record I buy without listening to it closely first.