Swedish mastermind Peter Tägtgren has long been hailed as one of the most talented Metal musicians and producers around, working together with a slew of bands, all the way from Sabaton to Children Of Bodom, all whilst playing in numerous other projects such as Hypocrisy and Lindemann. Despite this daunting schedule, and a full two decades after its inception, Peter's hobby project Pain, is back in 2016 with Coming Home, unleashing the eighth full-length album five years after its predecessor You Only Live Twice.
When it comes to guest musicians, Coming Home rolls out a red carpet: on drums, Peter's 17-year-old son Sebastian Tägtgren delivers an impressive guest appearance and for the song "Call Me", Sabaton's Joakim Brodén joins the team for some typically raw warrior vocals…
Heavily influenced by Spock’s Beard, apparently, themselves heavily influenced by the likes of Gentle Giant, ELP, King Crimson, and Pink Floyd, No More Pain dwell in 60s and 70s progressive rock, with a modern edge to it. There’s nothing new that’s brought to the table here, nothing that’s a game changer, and they probably won't be very influential. That being said, "The Post Human Condition" is a great album for fans of the genre, and for those who actually like the standard prog rock formula.
While they use pretty much all common tropes of the genre and stick to the paradigm, it never (well, almost) sounds cliché or overtly retrograde…
When Made In Germany published their eponymous album on Metronome in 1971, this was the reward for their committed practising in grumpy rehearsal rooms for many years. All this began at Beethoven Gymnasium (College) in West Berlin. The West Berliners had started as a schoolboy band in order to play the hits of their protagonists. Under the name of "Cosmics" they still considered the "making of music" a hobby. In 1968 they won the first prize in an international beat festival together with the Chechen band "Atlantis". The bands became friends and saw each others. When the musicians of "Atlantis" split up, their guitarist (Stan Regal) stayed in Berlin, married and started to work in Audio recording studio. This was a favourable combination for the band to fulfil their dream to record their music material in a proper recording studio and to get a recording contract as they were technically well-experienced and sufficiently self-confident, too…
Real Estate’s sixth full-length album Daniel was recorded in an ebullient nine-day spree at RCA Studio A, in Nashville with Grammy-winning producer and songwriter Daniel Tashian (Kacey Musgraves). In 11 compulsively tuneful songs, they connect the uninhibited wonder of their earliest work with the earned perspective of adulthood.
Over the last decade, Real Estate have crafted warm yet meticulous pop-minded music, specialising in soaring melodies that are sentimentally evocative and unmistakably their own. The Main Thing dives even further into the musical dichotomies they’re known for—lilting, bright guitar lines set against emotionally nuanced lyrics, complex arrangements conveyed breezily— and what emerges is a superlative collection of interrogative songs as full of depth, strangeness and contradictions as they are lifting hooks.
Pain of Salvation is one of the landmark progressive metal bands still in activity. Led by Daniel Gildenlöw, the band is known for their concept albums, experimental sounds and consistent quality over their catalogue. In 2017, they released ‘In the Passing Light of Day’ to critical acclaim, after a hiatus caused by health reasons that their leading man thankfully overcame. After a couple of lineup changes, the band is back with a new record titled ‘PANTHER’…