REMEDY LANE

"Remedy Lane" is another very interesting prog metal album I found via the enthusiasm of our own sinkadoten. It's only my second PoS review so I'm not qualified to rank it amongst their others but I will say that I prefer the live "Be" material to this one.

That said, this is still a heck of an album. Complex structures, unbelievable musicianship, good vocals, it's all there. One of the things that blows me away about this group are the guitar solos, of which there are not quite enough! But Johan Hallgren has this amazingly interesting style of soloing that will be hard to explain but I'll give it a shot. I don't know about you but when I listen to many guitarists do their solos, my mind usually assimilates the song and player fairly quickly and I can hear where the solo will go ahead of time, in other words they're often predictable. Even on albums I've not heard a million times, you can get pretty good at just knowing where a player is going with something. But with Hallgren I have noticed that he rarely goes where I expect him to and he frequently surprises me. In addition to this he will also get to what you think is the end of a given run of notes, and then he'll tack on something extra right there where you would normally expect the next "part" to have already begun. I hope you can understand what I'm getting at. Both of these tricks make it really fun to listen to him play. I only wish he had more time on his own, he is usually on a short leash due to the rigid structure of PoS songs.

Which leads me to my criticism of the band. As good as the album is, and as much as complexity can be wonderful, Remedy Lane at times nearly suffocates in its seriousness and complexity. There are times I would really love to hear this band explode into a different kind of jam, looser and free of Daniel's constant lyrical drama. I'm not tanking the album over this because I still like it very much, just needed to point that out. I'd love to hear these musicians go NUTS without Daniel just a little more.

Hermansson and Langell are also veritable forces that raise this band above so many of their peers. The keys and drums are so consistently good you take them for granted after a bit. Very impressive. And then there's Daniel. What can you say? I imagine he's one of those love him or hate him kind of presences for metal fans. You could say that he's too overbearing and keeps this band from reaching where they could if they had more freedom from his epic concepts. On the other hand his songwriting talent is undeniable as is his vocal range, his charisma, and his amazing talent for turning emotion on a dime. He's good mellow, he's good at power, he's good at rage. And he can so smoothly shift gears where lesser singers would have difficulty.

It's impossible for me to find enough adjectives to go track by track on this release because there is so much consistency and thankfully it's uniformly good. If I had to pick one song that knocks me to the floor it might (on this day) be "Rope Ends" with its jaw dropping shifting rhythms, piano parts, and guitar. It's a killer.

I really look forward to hearing Scarsick and knowing what all the fuss is about. That one seems to divide the fanbase which means it must be interesting. As for this one, there's not much division. Recommended to all PoS fans and prog metal fans without hesitation.