Yer Metal Is Olde: Pain of Salvation – One Hour by the Concrete Lake

By Dolphin Whisperer

Music consumption looks much different today than it did in 1999. Hot new radio singles have become algorithmically or otherwise boosted pushes on major streaming services. Deluges of notifications from Bandcamp, Facebook/Instagram, and highly esteemed review sites have supplanted the physical zine scene.1 Various online chatter spaces with easy methods of sharing links,2 information, digital files have plowed over tape-trading, mix-disc swapping, and forcing your friends brazenly to plug into your extreme musical wiles. This is all to say that dates of releases find an easier path to peeping eyes, and archival data sits more completely from a variety of sources. So the oddity that Pain of Salvation’s sophomore album One Hour by the Concrete Lake emerged as the first available album for an majority of release regions just wouldn’t happen in the world of 2024.

Originally released in 1998 via Japanese label Avalon, One Hour wouldn’t make it to Europe and North America until 1999 via InsideOut Music, which also happened to be before that same entity re-issued PoS’s debut, Entropia (1997 release via Avalon). What’s important, though, particularly to the ethos of this kind of feature, is that One Hour explores themes of environmental waste and resource injustice that feel as applicable now as then, however idealistic in view—the liner notes even have environmental studies and other works cited. In this bleeding heart ethos and yet-to-crystalize PoS identity, One Hour, musically, flips about synth tones of metallic moods that fit more with peers of the day Dream Theater and Queensrÿche than earlier (or later) works do. But as the title track breaks way to “Inside,” there’s an undeniable rhythmic persistence that matches vocalist Daniel Gildenlöw’s chiseled and flamboyant persona that, for better or worse, defines all Pain of Salvation releases.

Yet, the idea that Pain of Salvation is a band more of a certain time in style defines the uniqueness that One Hour has to offer. Birthed in a 90s rock and metal scene forever changed by grunge, Pain of Salvation has often had a knack for working muddy and moody guitar sounds about their intricate and intimate works. Blowout tones force tracks like “New Year’s Eve,” “Water,” and “Black Hills” to crash against bright and melodic contrast, which allows triumphant crescendos to squirm into sonically moistened ears. And into these buttered receptacles PoS can also inject the out-of-place, late-album, mostly acoustic ballad “Pilgrim,” ripe with cheese and drama, with the preceding journey through auditory grit helping its brief run feel earned.

Bookended by companion pieces “Inside” and “Inside Out,” One Hour’s structure is not as adventurous as later material,3 but its traditional approach allows its departures and message to come through with an extravagant focus. The early “count this” challenge of “Handful of Nothing” and the last syncopated frenzy of “Shore Serenity” stand out like prog-pinched thumbs against the smoothed-out flow between other tracks. And, in turn, the simpler load of “Water” flowing with a natural grace into “Home” delivers tidy but still tempo-tricky in the high tide of Gildenlöw’s prog-hippie lamentations. One Hour forces itself to bend against its own ideas.

Likewise, One Hour by the Concrete Lake stands in a long line of Pain of Salvation excursions that are reactions to their own work and outside perceptions. With One Hour featuring more double-kick runs than any other album their future would hold, Pain of Salvation set out to show the world that, yes, you can call them metal. And as the proverbial tongue out to that same sentiment, its sappiest features aim to be a quirk in the whole to which one must grow accustomed. One Hour’s early placement in the band’s discography means that it didn’t have to make as hard a left turn as ’07’s Scarsick or the Road Salt albums later would. And in its youth, it playfully flips the sounds that built one side of progressive metal—the Gentle Giant prog mania, the Pink Floyd waning, the amp-toned riffs of classic rock—to be flashy in a way that most modern progressive music isn’t. So if you’ve never snorted the manbun metallers Pain of Salvation, consider One Hour by the Concrete Lake to be your way in like so many accidentally did way back when. And if you’ve overlooked this release in the wake of its more acclaimed follow-ups, well… don’t!4

#1998 #1999 #2024 #DreamTheater #GentleGiant #InsideOutRecords #OneHourByTheConcreteLake #PainOfSalvation #PinkFloyd #ProgressiveMetal #ProgressiveRock #Queensryche #SwedishMetal #YerMetalIsOlde

Leprous – Melodies of Atonement Review

By Dolphin Whisperer

Leprous and Angry Metal Guy have a contentious relationship. Once a critical darling in the eyes of Our Beholder, the Norwegian then neophytes released works that bustled with a “triumphant groove,” and presented a full band swirling in deeply layered, metal-minded melodrama. All against the traditional backdrop of tight, syncopated rhythms and with a vocalist whose siren-like tenor captured melodies that others simply couldn’t, Leprous lit a vision of progressive metal that was as emergent as it was rooted in the technical playfulness that has long inhabited the genre. Yet, journeying on with 2017’s Malina, and now continuing into Melodies of Atonement, Leprous—or namely, main man Einar Solberg—has iterated on different ideas of how Leprous strikes. Redemption, though, comes not at the eyes of those who judge blindly but through the ears of those who listen.

Early Leprous endeavors lived through characters stumbling through sleeplessness or crying out in a nightmare land. The journey from 2015’s The Congregation and onwards would, instead, see lyrical themes shift away from surrealist struggle and into “I”-centered narratives, which has continued well into the material here. In tandem Leprous shifted from a band at play to a band at work lifting the melancholy of moody pop refrains, spending less time in a snaking shuffle and more in a calculated chorus swell. Full of vocal gymnastics and repetitive, belted hooks, Pitfalls and Aphelion painted a Leprous who lay largely subservient to quiet storm builds and Eurovision key changes. None of these traits are inherently bad, but when an album rest on tactics like that the need for great chorus-driven songs arises—the goal of whimsy and exploration becomes harder and harder to find. Or, at least, the audience shifts.

In the face of this persistent struggle, or urge rather, to reshape the Leprous identity, Melodies of Atonement takes head on the challenge of remaining an interesting and encouraging band in the face of this pomp-needing platform. Embracing decidedly modern synth tones that pulse like a feverish, tucked-away dance floor (“Atonement,” “Limbo”), Leprous finds renewed vigor in both their song-leaning aspirations and sneaky, frenetic instrumental layers. Co-founding guitarist Tor Oddmund Suhrke has long been able to wield his strings as nimble, eclectic accompaniment—the trip-hop waltz “My Specter” and dreamy, dripping strut “Limbo” both finding a controlled, shrill, and warbling tone to cut in and around all else—while still crashing into low-end loaded chords against Solberg’s histrionic crescendos. In Melodies’ most vibrant move, late album crack “Faceless” sees both a restrained-to-explosive Solberg erupt amongst a plonking double bass walk and grand choir backing—a true wonder. Leprous can wear grandiosity well.

And while Melodies’ strongest moments hit that powerful stride for which modern Leprous aims, the total experience still finds an all to comfortable home in plaintive repetition and band-light expression. Though not quite a fault, it’s near a given that you’ll hear the title of any track across this run in the chorus. But both “I Hear the Sirens” and “Self Satisfied Lullaby” find an additional focus on their namesakes that feels like an extra layer of familiarity against the subtle and slow shifts that each has, in stark contrast to songs like “Atonement” and “Starlight,” where recurrences of highlight phrases and words build against urgent instrumentation and increasingly powerful vocal delivery. Unfortunately, this disparity in momentum creates an enjoyment barrier on repeat listens. In the case of “Starlight” that means that finishing the album on two lesser cuts feels like a chore, with “Unfree My Soul” coming off more as a cloying anthem of frustration in the shadow of greater peaks.

Perhaps in succession of Solberg’s solo works, Melodies of Atonement comes across soup-to-nuts as a mostly pleasing, diverse melodic experience. With previous outings, the issue of refrain after refrain of virtuosic wail defining the creases and crooks of each album’s wear made it hard to see why the whole of each experience needed to exist. The MENA scale, warbled lines that Solberg weaves throughout Melodies in “My Spectre,” “Sunken Ship,” and “Faceless” lift with a fresh breath the idiosyncratic and meticulous songcraft that Leprous has always had at their disposal. And in prime, Melodies exposes a rough and polished hypnotic sneer that carves similarly eclectic, song-driven works of late Dalbello or The Gathering. But the greatest of what those acts have to offer also comes loaded with consistently great—not just good—songs, a task at either level that remains out of reach for this iteration of Leprous.

Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Inside Out Music | Bandcamp1
Websites: leprous.net | facebook.com/leprousband
Releases Worldwide: August 30th, 2024

#25 #2024 #AlternativeRock #ArtRock #Aug24 #Dalbello #InsideOutRecords #Leprous #MelodiesOfAtonement #NorwegianMetal #ProgressiveMetal #ProgressiveRock #Review #Reviews #TheGathering