Schlager-debutants Pain Of Salvation presented themselves on Melodifestivalen this year with single "Road Salt" and have just released their new album "Road Salt One" not long after it, the album is full of catchy schlager-tunes, faboulous key-changes and disco-rhythms you can dance along all night long with. Sure your intuition didn't find here anything suspicious so let's for real. First time I gave it a listen I thought that band has made a really smart step to keep just caught sector of schlager-audience and showed such a calm and unaggressive side of their metal rock. Later I've found out that actually it's normal for this progressive metal band. However this is quite complicated, original, melancholic and ragged work that won't be understood by most of pop-music fans, sometimes it sounds very theatrical, sometimes you even start to think that you listen to rock-opera, in common it gives impression of weird mix of Rasputina, Nine Inch Nails, blues, 70s rock in my ears, actually it's not bad, some tracks are really worth listening. Band decided to put single "Linoleum" (being released in the end of 2009 on "Linoleum EP") on this album as well and after "Road Salt" next planned single is "Sisters", next video will be filmed for "Where It Hurts" though.
