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Review Summary: A great debut of one of the most underrated prog metal bands. A simply stunning album from a band which has managed to release consistently amazing albums since their conception. “Entropia” is the debut studio album of Pain Of Salvation and was released in 1997. The line up on the album is Daniel Gildenlow, Kristoffer Gildenlow, Daniel Magdic, Fredrik Hermansson and Johan Langell.
Originally, Daniel Gildenlöw founded the band Reality and one of the earlier members was Daniel Magdic. Pain Of Salvation was founded in 1991. Their sound is characterized by powerful guitar work, great lyrics with strong vocals and their music changes often between abrupt, calm and heavy parts. It’s quite common for Pain Of Salvation go to different tempos, time signatures and musical atmospheres, changing from powerful aggressive parts to sweet and gentle melodies. Other main feature of the band is the intense musical experimentation from album to album. Another trademark of the group is that each album is a conceptual album. The themes addressed in the band’s musical works change from album to album and range from sex, war, family, religion, environment, humanity and existence.
“Entropia” is the album that started it all. This isn’t their best album, but it’s still an amazing progressive metal album. Anyone could definitely see how it led to the magnificent “The Perfect Element Part I” and “Remedy Lane”. However, the sound in those two later releases is somewhat fuller, with better production, and they’re albums more personal to Daniel, I think. All in all, this album is a very strong starting point for an amazing band and would give any progressive metal band a run for their money and definitely I would recommend their albums to all who like progressive metal.
“Entropia” is divided into four chapters. The title of the album is derived from the words “entropy” (from thermodynamics, the measure of disorder present in a system) and “utopia” (the ideal society). The conceptual story of the album is about a child, his father and his mother through a period of war in a land called Entropia. When the father leaves his family to fight in the war, the son yearns for his father’s return. Sorely missing the love and the presence of his dad, the son strays from his path and falls into poverty and disarray, and finally he died. Broken with the news, the father pleads to God, and swears to take what’s left of his family and move away into West Entropia. However, their new life isn’t all he expected. West Entropia has its own share of problems. Industry is spinning out of control, the technology is pervasive throughout everything, violence and hate are far closer than ever before, and all of it quickly became dominant. So, the man became unable to protect the rest of his family, his wife, from the dangers of this hostile new world, and she died too. Upon suffering this second loss, the man has another conflict with God, and finally he realise that he was completely unable to protect his loved ones, from harm, and he commits suicide.
Musically, “Entropia” features elements of straight ahead metal, funk, jazz, bombastic progressive rock, bittersweet balladry and much more. Daniel’s voice is raw and slightly underdeveloped, comparatively speaking. You can feel the strain in his voice, especially when he attempts to hit highs and lows that would come effortlessly on many of their future albums. Daniel’s vocals are fascinating and exciting, as always. From a structural and song writing point of view, “Entropia” has all over the place. The group jumps between styles sporadically, moods and dynamics are constantly shifting around in potentially disorienting fashion, and the instrumental work is easily one of the best that they’ve ever made. Pain Of Salvation have come to always place the concepts first, and it might not be quite right on this debut. On it, the band was still experimenting with different directions and composing explorative, which is quite reasonable. The rhythm section of Kristoffer and Langell is at its most frenetic, displaying much more of a jazz influenced free style flow throwing around some rather type patterns that we never really get to hear on future albums.
Conclusion: “Entropia” is a great debut album. Those who don’t know it yet, or don’t give it the time it deserves are going to miss out a tremendous release. There is a lot going on within it. This isn’t something slapped together in someone’s garage in one or two nights, and Pain Of Salvation isn’t simply another Dream Theatre’s clone following a well defined path. This is music that has developed from the lives of the musicians who have produced it. There is a tremendous amount of complexity, both in the lyrics and in the music. The words and music are alive with emotion and passion. Lyrically, “Entropia” looks through the eyes of a small child, and those of his father. Musically, this is a very involved work. It carries a great deal of unity with the music while at the same time being greatly diverse. So, do yourself a favour and listen to it. This is the kind of album that works perfectly well the time that you may invest on it. To finish, I must say one more thing. This was Pain Of Salvation’s only album recorded with guitarist Magdic. As a compliment, we may say that he displays some of the best lead guitar work ever heard on a Pain Of Salvation’s album.
Music was my first love.
John Miles (Rebel)
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Album Rating: 4.5
Your comments are very well received, as usual.
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nice nice, never heard of these guys. think im gonna start with the perfect element
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
Do that, man. "The Perfect Element Part 1" and "RemedY Lane" are, for me, their best albums and are also the right place to start with this fantastique Swedish group. But don't forget that tey're a very special and different band.
| | | Album Rating: 4.0
Ace review for a dream debut of a top tier band.
Excellent writing man, pos'd.
You are so right about Magdic's playing.
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
Thanks Ksoflas. I'm glad you liked my review about this album of this fantastique band.
Yeah, I always thought this, about Magdic's playing. As he only participated on this album, he his normaly forgotten as a great guitarist, which is a great injustice.
Cheers.
| | | Album Rating: 4.0
They are the best new gen prog metal band around.
Do you live in Lisbon?
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YESS Pain of Salvation love its about damn time automatic pos I'm not even big on this album but this group is easily the best prog metal band of recent times
| | | Album Rating: 4.0
Easily.
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
@ SpaceMan
I agree with you, man. Pain Of Salvation is one of my favourite prog metal bands. I love them because they're, somehow, a very irreverent band. I know that many people dislike them due to their constant change in the direction of their musical style. Anyway, I think they have the truly spirit of prog, which is, the constant changing and progression into their music, from album to album, whether we like it or not. And most important of all, they have a path and they not change it, even under pression of the medias or of their fans.
Thanks, man. I really appreciate your comment.
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
@ Ksoflas
No man, I don't live in Lisbon, right now. The really true is that I was born in lisbon and I lived on it during 35 years. But now, I live in Viana do Castelo, for more than 20 years, a town in the north of Portugal, near the ocean too. Viana do Castelo is a very beautiful small town near of Porto, the second biggest city in my country. It's distant of Porto, about 70 km to north of Porto. It's near of Vigo and Santiago de Compostela, two towns in Galiza, in Spain, almost at the same distance of Porto.
And you, I think you're Greek. Do you live in Athens?
| | | Album Rating: 4.0
They could have been much more famous than what they turned out to be, but they still have a loyal, faithful fanbase that has supported them throughout the years (me being one of the fanboys).
It was tough to stay on board with RS1 but II turned out to be a good disc despite the 70s fetish.
Good review btw. This was their proggiest records, I rated it at 4 but it's just such a good debut disc, so mature, so inspirational, with a thought-provoking story.. Maaan I should bump it
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I'm glad you appreciated the comment e210013. I only wish I knew the album enough to offer a better opinion of it.
by the way I just wanna say that you clearly put a lot of time into this review, seems like english isn't your first language but I couldn't tell that was the case through the review, only through your comments. I'm guessing you did a lot of proof reading and editing. I mean you literally define an advanced thermodynamic property perfectly, and believe me you did it better then my thermodynamics 1 teacher did (i'm a mechanical engineer, that class is insane but really interesting). anyways I wanted to help you out by providing a few minor corrections:
-from album to album and range from sex, war, family
-to all who like progressive metal
-Pain Of Salvation have come to always place the concepts first
-This is the kind of album that works perfectly well
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
Yeah LunaticSoul, I agree with you. They could have been much more famous than what they turned out to be. However, I'm perfectly convinced that te main purpose of Daniel never was it. He always was an irreverent artist and so, he never cared about it.
About the Road Salt albums, despite I like both albums, they're undoubtedly my less favourite albums of them.
Thanks for the pos and comment.
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
Thanks SpaceMan. As you know now, English isn't my first language. As a Portuguese, my mother language is based on latin, so, it's a latin language, which is very different from the gramatical structures of the anglo-saxon languages.
And yes, all my reviwes always give me a lot of work to read and edit. First I must listen very carefully an album almost half a dozen of times. Then I need to read something about it, especially on the papers inside the art cover of the album. Then I need to put my ideas in Engllish and correct them several times, with the help of the google translator. So, as you can see, a review is a very hard work to me.
Thanks fopr your help. I'm going to correct the minor errors.
| | | Album Rating: 4.0
Daniel is a genius, great composer, lyricist and singer.
I live in northern Greece in a 60000 town.
I asked you cause i intent on visiting Lisbon.
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
Ok, I can see. If you need some information, you can ask me, all you want to know.
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I too find it hard to review an album very recent after its release
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
Yeah, I agree with you. In general I prefer let some time pass and let the dust settle with the time. It's more honest with ourselves, with the album itself and especially with the group itself.
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I agree with the others. Your English is good and gets better with every review . . . I'm not familiar with this band, but I'm listening to the album now and it sounds pretty good.
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
Thanks Twig. As I said before, "The Perfect Element Part 1" and "Remedy Lane" are their two masterpieces.
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