I'm going to take on Pain of Salvation! I was disappointed by Scarsick and the Road Salt albums. Everything from Entropia to "BE", on the other hand, is a work of goddamn genius. The concept behind this collection is of a slightly more accessible newbie's introduction to those first five albums, with two songs from each. I tried to cover a wide spectrum of what PoS is about. I tried to keep it under 80 minutes in length, which unfortunately meant that a lot of awesome epic songs had to be cut (believe me, it was hard settling on just one of those).
1. "! (Foreword)" (Entropia, 6:11). Awesome start to a career! Heavy riffs, awesome melodies, Daniel wailing away like a boss - sums up everything you're going to get.
2. "Nightmist" (Entropia, 6:49). Just a great song, and absolutely headbang-worthy. The funky bass break in the middle and the drum solo outro are pretty unique in the PoS catalogue, but they're damn surprising and fun. Kind of makes me sad they didn't do much else like this.
3. "Inside" (One Hour by the Concrete Lake", 6:12). The best aspect of Pain of Salvation, and almost any fan of theirs will tell you this, is Daniel's ability to convey emotions through his singing. This is one of the best displays of that. Oh yeah, and it rocks too.
4. "Water" (One Hour by the Concrete Lake", 5:06). A great example of the way in which PoS can start out with a mellow introduction and really build the song up into something else. The guitar melodies are some of the best in their catalogue. Beautiful and heavy at the same time.
5. "Ashes" (The Perfect Element, 4:28). Probably their best known song, and good for introducing people to the band. This has all the qualities that make Pain of Salvation great - catchy guitar riffs, great singing from Daniel (who mostly sticks to his lower range here, which I've always liked, and the layered vocals are a great touch), emotional lyrics, and gorgeous atmospheric keys. A better introduction you couldn't find.
6. "Her Voices" (The Perfect Element, 7:56). A song of two halves. One half is a pretty piano ballad with some nice singing from Daniel and interesting synth effects. Good, but nothing too special... but it explodes in the middle section, turning into an Arabic/Indian-inspired technical workout which absolutely takes it to a new level. And it flows naturally between them too!
7. "Beyond the Pale" (Remedy Lane, 9:56). Honestly, it pained me to have to cut a lot of great epic songs ("Idioglossia", "The Perfect Element", "King of Loss" etc.) for length constraints, but the one I chose for this collection is probably the best of them all. Goes through a lot of tempo and mood changes, but stays consistent through all of it, and that is HARD to do. A true class act in prog-metal epics.
8. "A Trace of Blood" (Remedy Lane, 8:17). Another heartfelt performance from Daniel (not surprising, considering what it's about), and it's pretty amazing overall. That keyboard theme in the opening is one of my favorite pieces of music in the entire PoS canon, and the chorus is catchy as fuck. Remedy Lane is my favorite PoS album overall (The Perfect Element was dragged down by too many filler-ish ballads), and it's songs like this that make it great.
9. "Iter Impius" ("BE", 6:21). A fantastic mini-epic that just builds and builds, and has one of the best choruses PoS have ever written, which is definitely saying something. "BE" is probably best listened to as one piece, but this is its crowning moment.
10. "Imago" ("BE", 5:11). Very cool use of a Celtic theme, which fits right in with the album's concept as well. Great vocals as well, but if you've got this far, that hardly needs to be said.
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). I made the playlists regardless of the completeness of the linking plus there are a few cases where my ProxTube add-on wasn't able to bypass the regional lock on certain videos and I couldn't find replacements so some songs will be missing. Here you go:
It's probably their best and most dynamic song (OK OK, it's 27 minutes long and it wouldn't fit...).
