Review Summary: Best Pain album yet. A bit more atmospheric, darker and diverse. But it still has the same recycled Pain sound which makes the album short-lived.
If there is something that I admire a lot in the metal scene is people who form these so called one man projects or side projects. Good examples would be bands like
Mirrorthrone,
Diabolical Masquerade and early
Vintersorg. There are of course a lot of other bands as well but these bands were just a few examples. But there is one band/project that I have caught my interest over these years. He started first as a guitarist in
Hypocrisy where he later became the front man, he has also helped bands like
Bloodbath and
Lock Up. To spice it up a bit more I can tell that he has been part of smaller, lesser known black metal bands like
Algaion and
Sorhin where he played drums. And at last I could mention that he formed his own black metal band called
The Abyss, which is currently inactive, or in worst case split-up. That’s quite a résumé huh?
Peter Tagtgren is his name and he is the supreme commander of his own band
Pain. Lot of metal people who are familiar to his death and black metal stuff would have parted thoughts regarding
Pain. According to various sources, lots of people who create their own side-projects tend to sound same similar to their other work. Let’s say if you play death metal then the project result could be labelled as avant-garde death metal or experimental death metal, just as a rough example. But this is not the case regarding
Pain.
Pain is a industrial, electronic, techno metal fusion. I guess you could call it future or computer metal as well. This is almost the total opposite if you compare this to
Hypocrisy. Lots of electronics are blended with simplistic but yet heavy riffs and drumming, keyboards play a huge roll here and all the vocals are clean singing.
Dancing with the dead
I don't want to remember, but I can not forget
Dancing with the dead
Because too much was never enough
Dancing With The Dead was released in 2005 and this album seems to have a little story of its own.
Peter Tagtgren is a metal workaholic, he has almost something going on all the time, but in the end, there is a toll that has to be paid. He got a heart attack and he was medically dead in almost five minutes more or less, but he was lucky and he returned back to life. This event was basically the biggest and only inspiration that Peter needed to create this album according to rumours that I found. Take a look at the track titles ‘’Dancing With The Dead’’ and ‘’Not Afraid To Die’’, pretty self explaining right? So what does this album has to offer do you think. Well I’m afraid to say that this is still the same Pain book but with a different album cover. The music hasn’t changed so particularly much, except that the lyrics have perhaps a bit more expertise in them and that the overall atmosphere has become a bit darker. This is not an album of diversity, many tracks follows a similar pattern, most of them goes in the same pace, and not all tracks stands out. The atmospheric tracks
Dancing With The Dead and
Same Old Song stands out among the slower tracks while
Bye/Die and
Stay Away reigns among the fast tracks.
Your soul is burning bright, high hopes of future in sight
Beyond the horizon lays a world that's so black
They'll try to shape your mind and make you walk the line
Don't let them steal your dreams, its all that you've got
Peter Tagtgren is the only guy here and that means that he takes care of everything, vocals, lyrics and instruments. This instrumental arsenal is nothing spectacular, here you will find riffs a la
Rammstein followed by simple catchy drum work. The bass follows the guitars and does not stand out from the rhythm sections; it also drowns because of the loud guitars and the slight overuse of electronic equipment. All in all this is a very simplistic instrumental performance, simple enough to create a good vibe of catchiness mix with some heaviness. Peter has proved himself as a gifted singer; growls, screams, shrieks and clean singing are some of his specialties. In this case you will only experience his clean singing, there is one exception though, in
Same Old Song Peter unleashes a very frustrated scream. If we look at the electronics and keyboards we can find different types of melodic patterns.
Stay Away and
Tear It Up has some of the albums ghost-spookiest electronics,
The Third Wave has a very cool future sound and
Same Old Song has some of the most majestic melodies. Each song has its own melody pattern but in the end you will probably get bored, you either find songs that you love or hate.
You want me on my knees but I'm not going down
Bye bye, leave me alone or
Die die, it's your choice
No time for games, so just leave me the f*ck alone
Pain is not a groundbreaking band/project but lot of people would have no problem to digest this type of music, since it is catchy, medium weight and at times complex due to the use of different types of electronic melodies. Fans of Hypocrisy might find Peter’s work with
Pain as brilliant while others are disgusted by it. Personally I don’t have any problem with this type of music, he has actually succeeded this time because
Dancing With The Dead is without a doubt his best work, yet. There are no huge flaws in this album, this is a clear case of ‘’like it or not’’. Tracks like
Same Old Song and
Bye/Die really stands out while
Nothing and
My Misery just repeats most of
Pain’s past material. Peter should be experimenting more with his project instead of recycle it all the time, but this album still feels more refreshing than his previous work. Perhaps he could broaden his vocal register, add some more technicalities or maybe make clearer contrasts between the tracks. This is recommended to people who likes everything that
Peter Tagtgren has been working with, industrial fans could take a look at this and metal fans who wants to discover something new could give
Pain a chance.
Recommended Tracks
-- Same Old Song (
Best Pain track ever, slow and majestic)
-- Bye/Die (
A very angry, catchy and fast song)
-- Dancing With The Dead (
A mellow and catchy song with a good atmosphere)
-- The Third Wave (
Best intro of all the tracks, pretty calm song)
4/5
