MUSIC REVIEW: Pain of Salvation - The Perfect Element I

"Terrific, unique."

Pain of Salvation is one of progressive metal's most promising bands. While I consider myself a pretty big fan in general, I think The Perfect Element (Part I) is probably their most defining album. Entropia was extremely original and mostly solid, but much the album's is kind of all over the place (which works for me, but I like that kind of eclectic stuff). One Hour By The Concrete Lake was an improvement, with better production and songs overall, but it was, dare I say, a little more more "straightforward" progressive metal (relatively speaking, of course! this is no Dream Theater clone!) and it lacked the striking originality of Entropia. Clearly, there was a balance that could be achieved.

With The Perfect Element, PoS has refined their sound, synthesizing the remarkable uniqueness of Entropia and the stronger songcraft of One Hour. Gone are the sometimes awkward herky-jerky musical passages, the needlessly embellished vocals, and turgid lyrics. Here, everything works. No, it's not perfect. But it's damn good.

The band's nature is very eclectic, for they change musical bearing unpredictably. The first tract, "Used," best exemplifies this. It begins with the harrowing coupling of heavy guitars and synths, with vocalist Daniel Gildenlow's dark, fierce intonations. With the chorus, the song undergoes a complete change as it suddenly shifts into a harmonious melody with sharply contrasting "lighter" vocals. (Sound familiar, PoS fans? It's like "!" from Entropia, but better.) "Used" is a pretty extreme example, for the rest of the album is more cohesive from song to song, but the fundaments of this versatile approach remain intact. For those who are new to PoS, this might sound almost annoying. Let me aver that the polarizing course of the music is one of its greatest merits. Why? Because the they does it incredibly well. When a band can blend so many musical ideas so seamlessly and naturally, taking you from hell to heaven and back again, it's definitely stunning.

More so than any other Pain of Salvation record, this one has the most equal balance of strident heaviness and balladry. Soft piano leads, clean electric and acoustic guitars are used as often as heavy guitar riffery. This dichotomy may irk those who favor the aggression to ballads, but this album is best thought of as a whole (it is a concept album, after all). In that respect, the balanced qualities work well.

Daniel Gildenlow's vocals have improved much since One Hour By The Concrete Lake. He still reveals some weaknesses in the higher octaves, but he seems to have a better understanding of his strengths and weaknesses. He has also improved his lyricism. On previous albums they were almost too cheesy and, I don't know... blatant? But now they are mostly just plain good. The poetic aptitude he shows in conveying this deeply emotional story about childhood is pretty impressive. As for the concept itself, the specifics are obscure, but this ensures that a lot of time will be spent unraveling this intricate story. For those listeners who don't care much about the lyrics, the album can be enjoyed simply by riding on the dynamic musical waves...

The album's only fault is its production. The production is actually good overall, but PoS' sound contains myriad textures, many of which are difficult to dissect because the production splatters everything into a blob of keyboards and guitars that is difficult to distinguish if your sound system isn't at least somewhat formidable. The guitar tone often makes it difficult to distinguish individual notes. When Gildenlow sings softy with a dense background of instrumentation, his words can be unintelligible. Similarly, when multiple vocal lines are concurrently sung, making out individual words his needlessly hard. The production is imperfect, for certain, but in other ways the band has never sounded better. The keyboards in particular sound stronger, and the crunching guitars are more raucous, and the vocals are strikingly visceral.

In the end, the production doesn't detract from the listening experience too much, because it is so strong on the whole. Hopefully, The Perfect Element Part II will retain all of this one's merits and tweak the production.

(Final note: If you see this in a store, don't get apprehensive about the band's photo on the back. Sure, they look like Korn or some other "nu metal" band, but the looks are where the similarities end. Enjoy!)