Pain of Salvation @ Fuzz Club

\r\nWhen we say the show starts at 20.30 we mean not a second later! Just on time the show of Friday January 7th with Scar Symmetry & Pain Of Salvation began. We arrived late in FUZZ and missed most of the Scar Symmetry set. The venue was nearly packed on their first live appearance in Greece. Its always a great thing the particular promoter chooses to bring more than one band in for a show Harry Katinakis is always combining two or three bands to make the live appearances more appealing. In this particular case I think Scar Symmetry was a little far fetched and for no reason. In my opinion Scar Symmetry are a hype band mostly promoted by the media with no substantial musical suggestion in their music. I’ m sorry if I sound displeasing to the fans of the band, but both the indifferent part of their set I witnessed and the extremely good performance of Pain Of Salvation that followed made me say without any hesitation that I can’t remember a single note of the band.
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\r\nAfter a long pause on 22.00 Pain Of Salvation took the stage. It was the second time I watched the band perform live the first one being in Rock Em All festival in 2009 so I’ll count this one as the first. Daniel Gildenlow is a truly gifted musician with a unique colour in his voice and amazing technique. He uses his voice like a musical instrument, using it’s ability to the fullest. Ability with an extremely wide range. He balances in the genres he interchanges and sings as if he is dancing on a string, makes a twirl in the air and lands on the rope in a gracefull and skillfull way. However apart from the technique, what really blows you away in his performance is the feeling he processes and expresses that really overflows his performances. Daniel finds out the little dark place inside you where sadness and nostalgia dwells, stirs it up until it chokes you in the throat and as the feeling paralyses you ha salvages you with a furious outburst. 
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\r\nTheir stage show was very pleasant and Daniel was very communicative with the audience by joking around, self gibing but also in narrating the stories behind the songs. He joked around about everything, from 1997 when they released Entropia and how the hottest act in the music business was the Spice Girls up to the Jazz cover of Holy Diver that would most definitely make Ronnie James Dio twirl in his grave. I liked the way the mood of the show balanced from entertainment to melancholy and back again with outbursts and silence and the audience participating in the passion that sprang in-between. Passion which is a resident of Athens as Daniels said. I liked that in the encore part of the show they covered Come Together of The Beatles, Superstitious of Steview Wonder and Don’t talk to strangers (tribute to Ronie James) changing roles on stage as  Daniel sat behind the drum kit, the drummer Léo Margarit, and the guitarist Johan Hallgren took the mikes. 
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\r\nAs far as their sound is concerned it’s really admirable the fact that they sound equally as good as in their recordings without loosing the least bit in their quality.  The only thing that they enjoy doing, elegantly and flexibly is to challenge their own synthesis enjoying both the fact that they’re playing music and also exhausting their skill as players. Open faced and genuine they dig the music they present that you can’t but be moved. Particularly in their melancholic parts they become so personal, so private that they touch you as deep as it takes to take your breath away.
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\r\nPain Of Salvation are an experience that moves you in many levels as long as you give them the chance. It’s sure they’ll take you with them… \r\n

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\r\nReport: Elena Mihailidou
\r\nPhotos: Jim Hatzimoisis\r\n

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