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Review:
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Pain of Salvation has been delivering their
own breed of progressive metal albums for well over a decade
now. The Swedish group, fronted by "Daniel Gildenlow",
is eas ily one of the most talented progressive outfits
currently performing today. Every album the group has recorded
is a concept album, often with a meaningful message and/or
story. "On The Two Deaths Of Pain And Salvation"
is a documentary and live performance from this severely-underrated
progressive outfit. ***
"On the Two Deaths of Pain of Salvation"
features two discs, each showing us the band in a different
way. The first disc is a multi-part, 80-minute documentary,
highlighting the band’s career from the early days right
up to the present. The second disc is a 2007 Amsterdam concert,
featuring the band doing what they do best. As if this wasn’t
enough, a double live album CD is included as well. ***
Ultimately, this package is going to be
very satisfying to any fan of the group. Chances are if
you’ve been a die-hard from day one, you’re not going to
learn anything new in the documentary, but you’ll want to
have all this information in one place just the same. Likewise,
the concert chronicles one of the band’s finest performances
of recent years. There literally is no other progressive
rock outfit out there today that sounds like Pain of Salvation,
and as such, this package comes highly recommended to any
fan of the band or genre. My only regret is not discovering
this band sooner! ---
Image and Sound:
" Inside Out Music" has put together
an excellent presentation for "Pain of Salvation"
fans here. The image quality on this disc is top-notch,
pretty much the best you can do on a DVD. Of course, it’s
the sound quality that’s really going to matter to the fans,
and let me be the first to tell you it does not disappoint.
The band’s unique brand of progressive rock will give your
speaker system a serious workout, from start to finish.
This is a great presentation of a great band’s music. ---
Special Features: The documentary and concert alone were
worth the price of admission, but the group has given fans
a number of bonus features in addition to this already-great
material. Included on the disc are slideshows, commentaries,
bloopers, and plenty more interesting content. No fan of
the band is going to be disappointed by what has been included
here for bonus material.
Final Words: Fans of "Pain of Salvation"
or progressive rock/metal in general are not going to be
disappointed with this release. It’s a nice chronicle of
both the band’s history and one of their finest concerts
of recent years. The CD set and the bonus features only
sweeten the deal. If you’re a fan of the band and/or the
genre, this set is a must-own. ***
On a final note, to anyone unfamiliar
with the band’s political stance, "Daniel Gildenlow"
has boycotted performing in America for the last five years
due to his disdain for the Bush Administration – and has
even considered not releasing any material here. An open
letter to Mr. Gildenlow – you have a right to believe whatever
you want politically, but keep it to yourself. This childish
boycott is a good way to hurt your record sales. I don’t
want to turn this into an angry rant (it’s a music review
after all) so I’ll stop here. Don’t involve yourself in
American politics when you’re not even an American.
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