Pain of Salvation
12:5

Release Date: 2004 | Tracklist

“12:05” is the debut live album by Pain Of Salvation and was released in 2004. The line up on the album is Daniel Gildenlöw, Kristoffer Gildenlöw, Johan Hallgren, Fredrik Hermansson and Johan Langell.


In 1984 the very young and talented guitarist/vocalist Daniel Gildenlow formed the band Reality. They’re still the youngest band ever to have made it to Rock-SM, the national music contest that made of the European band a household name around the world in the 80’s. It was there that Pain Of Salvation began their earliest incarnation. The guitarist Daniel Magdic and the drummer Johan Langell joined along with the bassist Gustaf Hielm. It was with this line up that Pain Of Salvation emerged in 1991. By the late of 1994, Daniel’s younger brother, Kristoffer, had taken over the bass duties and the band’s sound was further augmented by the keyboard player Fredrik Hermansson.

After their fourth studio album “Remedy Lane” released in 2002, the group engages in the Swedish assembly of the musical piece “Jesus Christ Superstar”, and were being responsible for implementing the songs. Before they do a new album, the band does acoustic shows in Sweden, presenting new approaches to the old songs released by them on some of their previous studio works. So, the final result would become this new live album. “12:05” was recorded from a live concert in the band’s hometown of Eskilstuna, in Sweden, on 12 May 2003 at 12:05, only in front of about 80 people. So, the name of the album derives from the hour of the beginning of the live show. It’s an unplugged live concert, with only acoustic instruments. So, it has no electric guitars and has a grand piano and a harpsichord, instead of the usual synthesizers normally used by the band. I myself enjoy music performed only with acoustic instruments.

“12:05” features songs from almost all their four studio albums to date except from their second studio album “One Hour By The Concrete Lake”. The songs on “12:05” aren’t simply the original studio versions played with acoustic instruments. Most of the music here was rearranged with the addition of some new parts. They did that, because the group didn’t want simply release a Pain Of Salvation’s live album, but do a live performance taking a more personal and different approach to the old material released on their previous studio albums. Basically, what they wanted to do was a totally new album with the old material. It was a risky business, because, as many of we know, the entire band studio albums are concept albums. However, I must say that they did it very well, and the bet was really won.

The set list of the album is split into three sections or chapters, with like 1/3 in every chapter. The music on the chapters isn’t that different, maybe a bit more instrumental on the first chapter and with more lyrics on the middle chapter. The two sections entitled “Brickwork” apparently consist of the band’s cleverly rearranging of their previous songs into various segments. The middle section provides acoustic renditions of several songs from their then short career, in a less abbreviated form. The only thing I can say is that the performance is absolutely impeccable and irreproachable. Sure, these songs, when put into an acoustic form, lose a lot of the power that made them so impressive at a first place. However, they gained another life and show us a totally new and amazing face of the group.

The performance has a very intimate atmosphere. No really new songs can be found on this album. Although some of the tracks are just snippets of the original tracks. Most of the songs are a bit smaller and lack to them the rough edge of the studio versions, but all the songs are still dynamic and the harmony of the voices, work even better here. For the first few spins, it’s a kind of an exercise if you can recognize the songs, because they aren’t all that obvious. You can notice that, because the crowd doesn’t start cheering right away. However, after those first encounters with these new versions, you soon can realize that they are all very good or even excellent, and they can be easily recognized.


Conclusion: Being an acoustic set, “12:05” could certainly easily be called the Pain Of Salvation’s most accessible album until today, which isn’t, in my opinion, necessarily a bad thing. They chose a very tight set list with a lot of variety. However, they had a relatively short repertoire until that moment. Despite the Pain Of Salvation’s original music be relatively different from which is performed on this album, I would recommend it to anyone who wants to get into this group, because it offers simple samples of their music or just about every stage of their ever changing sound. It’s especially indicated for those who prefer a more traditional approach to the progressive style of music, and have been turned off by the band’s more metallic approach to date. There is really so much to discover on it. However, this isn’t properly a mellow acoustic album to listen to when you want to calm yourself down, because it represents a heavy, moving and an emotional musical journey, through one of the best acoustic offers that can be provided to us.


Music was my first love.
John Miles (Rebel)

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4.3 superb

Rank: #0 for 2004