THE PERFECT ELEMENT - PART 1

My biggest change towards a band. When I first saw the video of Ashes I really didn't think much of Pain of Salvation. But after reading and hearing very positive opinions I decided to give this album a try(it wasn't really expensive, but not extremely cheap either). The Perfect Element is a dark and brooding concept piece. It's a story of two broken human beings meeting and loving each other.It deals with a.o. with incest, the loss of innocence, some sort of a "Bildungsroman", how indiviuals are influenced by society. About the music.Very well written and balanced. It features heavy and distorted but very warm and gentle parts too. The diverse influences are perfectly integrated.There are grunge and even rap influences(I like neither of this genres), but they work surprisingly well. The music is not full of solos, but if there are they perfectly fit the songs. The whole band plays well, I personally enjoy the gentle piano playings of Fredrik Hermansson and the drumming of Johan Langell very much. But the most impressive is Daniel Gildenlöw. He's a fantastic singer with incredible emotional range, a good guitarist and a very gifted songwriter/lyricist IMHO. All songs are great, but I'm most impressed by Idioglossia and the concluding title track. I needed some time to get into this album, but now it belongs to my favourites.