ROAD SALT ONE

One of the most attended albums of 2010 in the mind of a progressive fan was Pain Of Salvation's new album, since the bit disappointing "Scarsick". Boy, this was hard to digest. I really was bummed when I heard this album for the first time: they completely changed sound, sounding more like a blues/country rock band, with some original moments here and there. Now, I realize that the band never felt like they needed to label themselves, so they felt free to go another way, to experiment, using less experimentation than ever. Despite this, and despite not being really prog (or metal), this is a good album, seen badly by most of this site.

Twelve songs: the same as The Perfect Element, Pain Of Salvation's magnum opus and one of the best prog metal albums of all time. But "Road Salt One" is everything but "TPE": all the songs are quite simple, like a normal rock song, almost all of them short. Also the structure of the album, unlike TPE, obviously doesn't make you wanna listen to the whole thing, since it looks like just a really normal album.

Certainly, the good songs are present: "She Likes To Hide" is a great blues/ ballad song, with some psychedelic tones, "Sisters" ,very gloomy and melancholic, but very beautiful, "Of Dust", a mournful song played only with organ and vocals, "Darkness Of Mine" has a great catchy chorus, "Linoleum" a very rockish mood, with a chorus that quite reminds me of their previous album, "Scarsick", the melancholic, calm "Road Salt", a beautiful piece of music. However, some songs are forgettable and frankly quite annoying, like the opening track "No Way", or the joyous "Sleeping Under The Stars".

In conclusion, I've heard better PoS albums, but I respect this choice they made, which was to try to change their style a (huge) bit. It could have been better, but still not bad. 4 stars.