I’ve just checked my records and amazingly, unless there is another side project I don’t know about, Peter Tägtgren actually took a year off from recording last year! Well-earned it would have been too, for the renowned workaholic has admitted now to his work ethic costing him two marriages, although as you would expect music is his primary love. He splits his affections increasingly equally these days between Pain and Hypocrisy, and with Hypocrisy turning out the acclaimed ‘A Taste Of Extreme Divinity’ in late 2009, it’s time to return attention to Pain, the side of Tägtgren where he can express his bouncier side through the medium of light industrial metal. It’s been a formula that’s served him well for 7 albums now, but after the general mauling that last album ‘Cynic Paradise’ received, (I actually thought it rather good), ‘You Only Live Twice’ needs to be pretty special to prove there’s life left in this project.
After viewing the rather annoying cover, which instead of being the more tasteful understated Pain covers of old, looks like it belongs more on a Nu-Metal album, I pressed the play button with some trepidation. Initially it sounded like my fears were confirmed, as a disgusting spangly mess of synth dribbled out the speakers, but after a few seconds opening track ‘Let Me Out’ actually starts, and I soon wondered whether I was listening to Pain or Hypocrisy, as the track bursts forth with a ferocious intensity, a level which it maintains throughout letting the Pain sound eventually seep through the initial heaviness. Things are far more traditional on ‘Feed The Demons’ though, a decent lower paced number that is identifiably Pain, with Tägtgren’s voice alternating between a deep sinister whisper and a raspy scream. ‘The Great Pretender’ is more Pain by numbers, and sounds like a handful of songs off any of the previous albums, and whilst it would make for a suitable dancefloor anthem, it’s still reasonably throwaway.
It’s the title track that is the stand out by a mile on here, and is the only song that has stuck itself in my head. It’s unnervingly catchy, and with a title like that you would expect a cinematic feel to it, yet it’s not Bond that springs to mind, but Spaghetti Westerns, with the main riff sounding as if it’s been lifted from ‘The Ecstasy Of Gold’, which fits in well with the song. This is PT in full creative swing, albeit with some very clunky lyrical moments. The main problem with this album is that it seems to have an identity crisis. Each song seems to carry a different style and somewhere along the line it loses the thread. Never more so than the transition from the bombastic cinematic title track to the Slipknot meets AC/DC hard rock of ‘Dirty Woman’. It’s a decent enough track, if hugely clichéd, but seems out of place. Equally, ‘We Want More’ sounds like a track leftover from Cynic Paradise, and only adds to the rather messy feel here.
As the musical styles and influences continue to twist and turn like a twisty turny thing, ‘Leave Me Alone’ seems to borrow heavily from Host era Paradise Lost, albeit with a lot more oomph than that album ever had. It’s one of the better tracks on here easily. ‘Monster’ once again shows that Tägtgren has been heavily influenced by Slipknot in recent years and has assimilated their sound into the Pain program. The album finishes on a high note however with ‘Season of the Reaper’, a slow and atmospheric piece that brings to mind Hypocrisy’s ‘Paled Empty Sphere’.
‘You Only Live Twice’ is a frustrating album. It’s songs on their own merit are all rather good, but as an album it flips and flops all over the place, and not in a way that maintains the interest. Also hearing chunks of music being lifted pretty much verbatim from other material reeks of laziness and that’s never a word I expected to use in association with Peter Tägtgren. I don’t know, maybe I’m missing the point and these knowing homages are there to add to it rather than detract, but I can’t deny my gut feeling that this is a bit of a thrown together effort and that maybe if you only live twice, with this album, he’s just used up the last one. Maybe it’s time to call time on Pain and concentrate on Hypocrisy.
http://www.myspace.com/pain
Lee Kimber
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