THE SECOND DEATH OF PAIN OF SALVATION

I have to start by saying that I don't actually own this live album but after seeing the live performance on DVD at my friend's house and streaming the album off Spotify for the last couple of days I consider myself to be sort of an expert on the issue of this release and therefore will now share my views on it. If you consider these qualifications unworthy of an opinion then by all means restrain yourself from reading the rest of it.

Previously I've mentioned that every time Pain Of Salvation decides to do something for the first time they put a little extra effort into making it as memorable as possible. This happened on the band's first live album 12:5 which resulted in acoustic re-workings of the their studio material. The same thing with their live DVD of Be Live which was a well produced and choreographed stage performance of the concept album Be. Finally the band's first EP entitled Linoleum had a fun little surprise embedded towards its end.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that this rule should be expanded with an annotation that mentions that although every time Pain of Salvation does something the second time around they do something more of an ordinary nature. The Second Death Of Pain Of Salvation is a live recording of the band's 2007 performance at Paradiso in Amsterdam. There isn't anything spectacular about this particular performance unless it's put in the perspective of being the last released album featuring Johan Langell on drums who left the band after this tour to concentrate on family commitments. This, together with Kristoffer Gildenlöw's departure from the band, marks the end of a chapter for Pain Of Salvation and in that case this release does fit well into the order of things.

Unfortunately I don't rate this particular performance anywhere near the shows that I've seen this band perform over the years. I saw a big chunks of this material live at the Sweden Rock 2008 performance which, to tell you the truth, was far better than what these guys accomplish here.

I remember reading an interview where Daniel explicitly said that he found it difficult to emotionally invest time and energy in this particular production because of the changes that the band underwent at the time. It's true that the DVD production isn't top notch but it's nice to see that there was a lot of effort put into the design of the artwork and menus in order to simulate a sort of fictional TV-series feel to it. This doesn't really enhance the performance which is still the main attraction of a live CD/DVD purchase but at least it counts for something.

There are of course a couple of highlights like the unexpected performance of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah which actually fits surprisingly well into Pain Of Salvation's repertoire. I also liked how the band's didn't try to hide their influences in the intro to Cribcaged which did originally remind me of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here on the studio album recording, but here the band actually starts the performance off by playing that famous intro section!

I guess the fact that I restrained myself from purchasing this live album speaks louder than any words and there were quite a few of them in this review, so you can't blame me for not trying.

***** star songs: Hallelujah (9:04)

**** star songs: America (5:55) Nightmist (7:47) Handful Of Nothing (7:43) New Years Eve (5:47) Ashes (5:25) Undertow (5:10) Brickworks 1 (Parts II-IV) (6:25) Chain Sling (3:59) Diffidintia (7:35) Flame To The Moth (6:03) Cribcaged (6:23) Used (5:42)

*** star songs: Scarsick (7:09) !(Forward) (6:47) Disco Queen (8:14)