HISTORY
Peter Tagtgren is a very well-known person in the metal underground, his career began with his highly succeeded death-metal band called
Hypocrisy. He did later join up with other extreme metal bands while he still was active with
Hypocrisy, he joined bands like the death/grind-metal band called
Lock Up, he has also played in bands like
Bloodbath plus his little side-project
The Abyss, which was a black-metal act by
Peter and his two companions
Mikael Hedlund and now former member called
Lars Szoke. But
Tagtgren had another project and it is called
Pain which was created in 1996, this is a solo project were [i]Peter Tagtgren[/b] is the only sole member. This project is an industrial act, this is not even close to his extreme outfit, and this is like a techno-metal band if you can call it like that.
Peter uses a lots of technical programming, sound effects and a very clear and neutral singing voice in this album, and he does it very good I must say.
Peter is a man with many irons in his fire and this might be one of his better works except for his work with
Hypocrisy (which is his best in my opinion).
ALBUM INFORMATION
This is the total opposite to his death-metal/extreme metal projects, this album is called
Nothing Remains The Same and it was released in 2002, this sounds very calm and somewhat peaceful but it is yet pretty strong and forceful. There are no signs of highly skilled or complex musicianship, but it sounds excellent though. The main thing that dominates this album is the technical computer stuff; there are lots of sound effects which sounds pretty cool and futuristic. The vocals is also the total opposite, the clear and calm vocals are yet effective and somewhat forceful. The instruments are nothing highly advanced, the drum patterns sound very simple and it is the same thing with the other instruments. The songs in other hand is though nothing to praise about, industrial fans might find this great but I wouldn’t agree though, but there are some really great songs here. Songs like
Save Me,
Its Only Thing,
Shut Your Mouth and
Close Your Eyes are some highlight songs, these are also my favourites because of the fact that these songs are heavy, catchy and has a good flow. But, there are many songs here with their own pattern, no song sounds similar to another which is a great thing. There are fast songs, heavy songs, calm songs you name it. The lyrics are though still the same if I say so, the texts are not about peace and love, these lyrics focuses on hate, death, people vs people, dejection, society and stuff like that.
THE CREW
I told you before that this band is made by one single person,
Peter Tagtgren. He can handle the instruments very good and he has a good grip on the electronics. There are also some orchestra effects in some of the songs, there are keyboards and other technical stuff. It is very hard to describe the overall instrumental performance but I can say that this is the result when metal forges together with techno. The normal instruments so to say just makes the basic structure while the electronics makes the whole building, there are no solos of any kind (I can’t hear them though if there are any), it is definitely the sound effects that takes all the space. But I think that everything makes a good final product, you might get tired of the annoying sound effects and maybe the vocals but it sounds good. You might have some difficulties to hear certain instruments like the bass and sometimes the guitars, the only some that I can describe as metal would be
Its Only Them.
Peter has though a live crew as well so he doesn’t need to perform alone, this makes the band in a total crew member of five. The other band members are
Alla Fedynitch (bass),
Andrea Odendahl (guitars) and
David Vallin (drums).
MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS ALBUM
I have only heard two industrial-metal bands and they are
Rammstein and
Pain and I can say that there are very huge differences between these bands. Anyway, the things I liked about this album were the pretty good mix between actual metal and these techno sounds. You can hear that there are real instruments in the background, the instruments are though quite loud but the electronics still takes most of the space. A second thing I enjoyed was the good use of electronics, songs like
Expelled was very good because the electronics was not as dominating, there was plenty of it but it didn’t cover the rest of the instruments. The last thing I liked about this album was that none of the songs sounded similar to each other, every song had a unique sound, and with the orchestra effects in some of the songs made it even better. But there was also a few things that I didn’t liked, one thing I found negative was the large amount of electronics, I know I said that he used them in a good way but I think there was too much of these sound effects. If you compare this band to
Rammstein you would probably choose them instead of this, they have a bigger metal sound which would be more interesting for the listener. This album seems to be focusing on the vocals and the electronics, the instruments does not get as much attention as they would’ve needed in my opinion.
MY CONCLUSION
There you have it, I had this album hidden somewhere in my house and when I found it I thought that I could review it because nobody has submitted a
Pain review yet. This was as I said my second industrial-metal band and I think I will stay to my beloved thrash and death-metal music from now on. This didn’t work to good for me, I enjoyed it from time to time but the electrics and sound effects did not made a bigger impression on me. If you are a dedicated fan to
Hypocrisy this might be a disappointment or a
big disappointment. I would only recommend this album to industrial fans, but if you found this interesting don’t let me stop you. I hope that this review was to any help and I thank you for taking time to read this review.
RECOMMENDED TRACKS
• Shut Your Mouth
• Save Me
• Expelled
• Just Hate Me
This album will be given a 3/5 because of its variation of the overall material and for its vocals
I think PAIN are all about catchiness and disco metal (I DON'T say it's bad ^^), industrial things are on second place. I used to like it very much, but somehow it..lost it's power..however, my highlights still do it for me.
