You were expecting hulking, heavier-than-Hercules’-pecs riffs. You were expecting dunderheaded choruses. You were expecting a blend of electronica and industrial metal that makes Deathstars sound like Whitesnake, weren’t you? Well, with Pain’s eighth smattering of sing-along sin, ‘Coming Home’, you get all that and a little bit more.
Peter Tägtgren, the multi-instrumentalist mind behind the band, knows what you want. The core sound here is essentially a mish-mash of Pain’s ‘You Only Live Twice’ and Tägtgren’s collaboration with Rammstein’s Till Lindemann from last year, the handily titled Lindemann.
Previous hints at clean vocals are fully realised on ‘Coming Home’, with Tägtgren coming across as an angsty Daron Malakian on Black Knight Satellite and Call Me. This is an album that presents a challenge to the big hitters. It’s a mash up of Ministry, Rammstein and Rob Zombie, but knowingly funnier than all three.
On that front, the militaristic anal sex anthem Pain In The Ass is everything you’d hoped for: chugging guitars, gang vocals, ludicrous keyboard lines and choice quips: “One way in, no way out. A giant leap for mankind.”
To revisit Call Me for a moment: what a guest turn from Sabaton’s Joakim Brodén. The supercharged Swede stops singing about tanks for two seconds here, instead assuming the role of a gigolo and claiming he’ll “show you what your boyfriend don’t understand” in bassy, bullish tones. By way of juxtaposition, Carach Angren’s Clemens ‘Ardek’ Wijers delivers lavish, ludicrously pricey-sounding orchestration on an album that’s basically about sex, drinking and conspiracy theories.
Although Wijers also worked on Lindemann’s ‘Skills In Pills’ record, this could be nothing but Pain. You can’t imagine Till bellowing over the KMFDM-cum-John Lindberg Trio opener Designed To Piss You Off, nor could you envision the Rammstein mouthpiece stomping on the majestic, Hans Zimmer-levels-of-epic title track. Only Tägtgren could be doing this.
Essentially, what he has turned in this time around is a pop record. The low-end, eight string assault during the mid-section of The Last Crusade might be a bit much for those unfamiliar with Tägtgren’s death metal day job in Hypocrisy, but its belligerence really serves to elevate a ridiculous earworm of a chorus. Then there’s the sweeping ballad and closing gambit Starseed and acoustic guitars on the title track that actually sound really, really good.
A few niggles aside – Tägtgren’s phrasing is sometimes a tad clichéd, most prominently on A Wannabe’s ham-fisted refrain – ‘Coming Home’ is a banger. It stands on its own as both a Pain record and a product of Tägtgren’s mind, and not just because his son, Sebastian, provides the percussive counterpoint to Dad’s work here. With Pain’s eighth record, he seems to have just about balanced the sacred with the profane, the heavy with the hummable and the delicate art of crying with partying past your bedtime.
Pain Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Mon October 24 2016 - LONDON Underworld
Tue October 25 2016 - WOLVERHAMPTON Slade Rooms
Wed October 26 2016 - BRISTOL Fleece
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