By Carl Begai (photo by Lars Ardarve)

Since the release of One Hour By The Concrete Lake in 1998, Pain Of Salvation have been known for quality music that transcends the progressive rock stamp they’ve been saddled with. They’ve kept everyone guessing from album to album, seemingly more concerned with how far they can push their musical and conceptual limits rather than staying true to a signature sound. In 2004 Pain Of Salvation released their intimidating epic rock opera BE, following it up in 2007 with the much more straightforward – and in the case of the song ‘Disco Queen’ – disturbing record, Scarsick. Thus it comes as no surprise that the band’s latest outing, Road Salt One, bares only a passing resemblance beyond frontman Daniel Gildenlöw’s vocals to its predecessors. It’s also fair to say that nobody expected them to go in a gospel blues direction with the occasional tip of the hat to Queen and Pink Floyd. Or in the case of ‘Tell Me You Don’t Know’, channeling ZZ Top.

“We released the Linoleum EP in November 2009 as a warm up for the album, so I don’t think it came as a complete surprise to people,” says keyboardist Fredrik Hermansson. “But, we go through the same thing with every album release. It’s more fun for us to do things that way.”

It helps that Pain Of Salvation have the advantage of a fanbase that is more or less expecting each new album to be different from the one before it.

“Yeah, and that feels great when we start working on a new album because we don’t feel restricted, like we have to do something specific to make people happy. We’re at least able to try different ideas out. Road Salt One is a natural progression from Scarsick. On that album we were focused on getting a more band-oriented sound, and we took it a step further on the new one. In a way I suppose Scarsick was the work in progress for this one. We got the sound we were striving for.”

Is it fair to say that Road Salt One and Scarsick were created as a response to the over-the-top nature of BE? Granted, a musical production addressing the existence of God can’t be anything less than epic, but Road Salt One is sparse in comparison. Less is indeed more this time out.

“It could very well be the case, yes. I don’t know if we reasoned it out like that, but yeah, BE was an exhausting record to make. We never decided on that at the start of Road Salt One. We’ve been working on the album for quite some time, but there wasn’t a specific goal in mind. What we did know was that we wanted to make an album with a live feel to it, so we actually ended up recording it live in the studio. All of us playing at the same time in the studio, which was kind of strange, but it worked out better than we thought it would. It was a totally retro way of thinking, I guess, back to the way they made records 40 years ago.”
“We spent a lot of time trying to find a basic sound for the album. And of course, since we were recording all at the same time we had to wrestle with the levels of the amplifiers (laughs). We also had the opportunity to use my own Fender Rhodes piano, and that felt great. So, we actually found a good sound for the album pretty much at the start of the sessions.”

It’s worth noting that when Hermansson says “we” he means it. Pain Of Salvation is often seen as the Daniel Gildenlöw show given that he’s often the driving force behind the album concepts.

“Daniel quite often writes the stuff because he has lots of great ideas,” Hermansson says, making it clear Gildenlöw isn’t the band’s resident dictator. “Sometimes he comes to the rehearsal room with finished ideas and them we try them out to see if they work. It’s different from song to song. There are some songs for Road Salt One that Daniel wrote and recorded entirely on his own. He had the opportunity to record a song and he took it; I would be the same way if I had the opportunity to record something quickly. On the other hand there are songs on the album which everyone worked on together.”

As for the progressive rock label Pain Of Salvation has been forced to wear, it is even more ill-fitting with the release of Road Salt One.

“We never chose the progressive rock label and I don’t think we’ve ever been comfortable with it,” Hermansson admits . “We’ve noticed that the diehard Pain Of Salvation fans seem to like everything we do. Well, almost everything (laughs). At the very least those are the fans that give the music a chance before passing judgement.”