Radio Metal recently conducted an interview with PAIN OF SALVATION’s Daniel Gildenlöw. Excerpts from the audio interview are below:

Radio Metal: The last song you played today was a bit different than usual…

Daniel Gildenlöw: “The thing is we only had 45 minutes, which is not really a gig for us. It’s sort of a warm-up! When we started to do the setlist, we figured that we would not be able to play the whole Perfect Element, because there’s the ‘Falling’ intro, where I play a lead solo thing. It starts off pretty soft before it kicks in, and we thought we had to kick in from the start, pretty much. It made for a pretty different experience; we’ve never done that before. We never even played it; we just talked about it twenty minutes before the show! (Laughs) We were like, “ok, maybe if you just did like ‘tick clack uh’ and then we start playing.” So, even though we talked about it, it still felt really odd doing it, because we have never actually done it. It was a weird situation, I guess.”

Radio Metal: You have already changed some songs in the past. I’m thinking of “Ashes” in major scale, for example. That was really cool.

Daniel Gildenlöw: “The one song that has probably gone through the most transformations through the years would be ‘Nightmist’. I have an old demo recording somewhere, from ’93 or ’94, where it’s really straight through the whole song. And then we’ve been developing it all the time. Already on our first album in 1997, we had introduced a lot of details. Now it’s been going through quite some transformations. We have a reggae part, a power death metal part, and we’re ending with a long twelve-bar blues in five/four. It’s a constant change; everything is up for grabs through the years.

Radio Metal: You should to more live albums, to immortalize these changes!

Daniel Gildenlöw: “Live albums always seem like a good idea. Today, people want to re-record so much stuff afterwards, and I’m just so against that. So I never do that. But of course, I always get involved in the mixing process. It always starts off like: “We’ll just record the live gig, and release the whole gig or whatever”. Then it ends up being lots more work. I prefer to work on new material. I’m sort of anxious and restless to move on.”

Radio Metal: Speaking of new material, when is Road Salt Two coming out?

Daniel Gildenlöw: “End of September. I think it’s the 27th of September. But I’ve heard it already, so it’s old news to me! (laughs)”

Radio Metal: What can we expect?

Daniel Gildenlöw: “It’s pretty much the same beast as Road Salt One. It’s really the same sort of sound. I used to say that it’s probably darker than Road Salt One, but I’m not sure anymore, ‘cause I’m so subjective. I’m so completely into it, it’s hard to tell. We have more seventies, old-rock-style, sort of ZEPPELIN or SABBATH-sounding songs, but we also have some soft, sensitive material. It’s really difficult to say how it’s gonna be received by people who’ve never heard it before. It’s more in the same style as the previous album than you can usually expect from Pain Of Salvation, since it’s part of the same thing, really.”

Read the entire interview here.

As previously reported, Pain Of Salvation have revealed the cover artwork and tracklisting for Road Salt Two.

Road Salt Two tracklisting:

'Road Salt Theme'

'Softly She Cries'

'Conditioned'

'Healing Now'

'To The Shoreline'

'Eleven'

'1979'

'The Deeper Cut'

'Mortar Grind'

'Through The Distance'

'The Physics Of Gridlock'

'End Credits'

Road Salt Two is scheduled for an October 11th release date in North America and a September 26th release date in Europe via InsideOut Music.

Pain Of Salvation have been confirmed as support act for a massive European tour with OPETH. More information and all the dates can be found at this location.