Album Review: Pain Of Salvation - Panther

Even when I was in my prog phase, Pain Of Salvation is a band that ecaped my interest. By the time I was really paying attention, they had moved past their glory days to the "Salt" albums, which were poorly recorded albums filled with mediocre songs that even many of the fans outright hated. They were warmer to "In The Passing Light Of Day" than I was, but even now I find that album to be an intolerable, unlistenable bore. Daniel Gildenlow has his mind set on challenging some normality of music on these new records, and he takes things too far into directions that don't have any musical appeal to them. This album, therefore, didn't come with much anticipation.

Right off the bat, the problems with this group jump out of the speakers. Or I should say they softly waft out of them. The guitars are played in the djent style, but with a loose and flabby tone that makes them sound sloppy, even when I'm sure they are right on time. The production is weak, and the songs themselves suffer for it. When the chorus of "Accelerator" comes, there an instant where it's supposed to sound loud and menacing, but the instruments are buried back in the mix enough that there's no change to the scope. It's a complete failure of recording and producing.

For most of the record, Daniel is in full brooding mode, which means this record is supposed to sound dark and ominous. As I already explained, the production does not allow for that to happen. The record instead sounds haze and old, like a sepia-toned photograph. It's more sad than anything, and is not exactly the sound you would want to listen to for much time straight. After a couple of songs, my ears get tired of trying to pick out the rock elements of the mix, which is mostly Daniel's voice and a mush of noise. I get that there is often some work involved in listening to prog, but it's not supposed to be work to even hear the prog.

Some of that might be salvaged if he was giving us a set of amazing songs, but that's not the case here either. Being so sullen, these songs meander through Daniel's poetry without strong melodies, content to waste our time until he can sing a couple of aimless powerful notes. This is everything prog isn't supposed to be. Prog is about expanding boundaries, challenging your limits, and inverting formulae. Daniel is writing the djent version of emo rock, and not even doing a good job of it. At least emp rockers tend to remember to put in melodies.

Such a sad, miserable album probably speaks to something in Daniel or his life since the last record, but I'm not going to try to decipher that. All I will say is that this is the sort of album you listen to if you want to wallow. If you want to maintain your sanity, I would advise staying away from "Panther", because all it did was make me miserable until it was over. That might be the point, but I get no comfort from hearing someone else's misery. I'm not that kind of person, which means this is not an album for me.

Pain Of Salvation is indeed a pain, yet again.