THE PAINFUL CHRONICLES

'The Painful Chronicles' - Pain Of Salvation (Compilation)

'The Painful Chronicles' is a promo that the band released early on in their career, choosing songs they thought would be representative of their bands sound, in order to gain a larger fanbase. Some of the songs chosen certainly work well to represent the band's awesome talent and skill, but other songs are on here that have never sat well with me, even on their original records.

'! (Prologue)' has always been my favourite early Pain of Salvation song. Despite being only six minutes or so, it covers such a wide range of emotion, as if it was a mini-suite of sorts. This is the song people needed to hear (at least early on in the band's career) to figure whether or not they liked the sound that was Pain of Salvation. The other songs on this compilation are comparatively arbitrary.

'Oblivion Ocean' is a very heartfelt song, and another decent choice. 'Revival' however never really stood out to me. If they were looking for a third song off of 'Entropia,' they should have picked 'Plains of Dawn,' it's gut-wrenchingly beautiful.

I've never been a big fan of 'One Hour By The Concrete Lake,' but I do like 'The Big Machine.' The other two songs taken from that album on here are nothing special. 'Inside Out's counterpart however (the album opener 'Inside') would have been PERFECT for this compilation though. It's much, much better than 'Inside Out.'

Might be cool to have if you're a huge fan of Pain of Salvation, but if you have the albums from which these songs originate, you're not going to be too intrigued by this.

Great little compilation for its time - I picked up "The Painful Chronicles" from the Greek Metal Hammer and at the time I was utterly impressed with Pain of Salvation. The 6 songs in here represent the style of their 2 first albums which is heavier and rawer than anything they have done subsequently. Saying that, Oblivion Ocean is a stunning melodic track among the rest. The tracks are generally as excellent as the respective albums (One Hour by the Concrete Lake and Entropia) and this compilation would be a great introduction for people who want to discover the early steps of PoS when they were less famous.

Saying that, I doubt you can find this easily and is rather pointless for people who already own the 2 albums. Those looking for the early stages of PoS should go for the full albums instead. A great treat at its time and works great as an EP, but sort of "surplus to requirements" now. Fans may still want to look for it in terms of completion.