Pain Of Salvation catch up with Chemical Magazine to talk Road Salt Two, concepts & their current UK tour with Opeth, Check out the interview here…

Chemical Magazine: Hey guys, how are you doing today?

Pain Of Salvation: Hi there! Everything’s fine here! Getting ready for the next five weeks of touring with Opeth! It’s going to be great!

Chemical Magazine: I heard guitarist Johan Hallgren is going to be leaving the band after your upcoming tour with Opeth, what are your plans regarding a replacement?

Pain Of Salvation: We were all very sad to hear that Johan wanted to quit, but of course, as hard as it’s going to be, we have to find someone to replace him. At the moment we haven’t really started the research and I guess we will focus on that after the tour, or eventually after Christmas and New Year. It’s going to be very difficult to find someone with both high guitar and vocal skills and who can hold the stage like Johan did Of course we won’t try to have some sort of copy, but to be honest this is not going to be any easy at all

Chemical Magazine: So, you’re going to be touring with Opeth over the next few months; how did this opportunity occur?

Pain Of Salvation: First we met Opeth at several occasions in festivals in the past, and we sort of became friends. Then it seems that Mikael Åkerfeldt really appreciates our two last records and their music took a similar turn as well with Heritage so I guess it felt pretty natural to go on tour together! It’s a great opportunity for us as they have a very wide audience all over the world, so I reckon we¹re all going to have a blast!

Chemical Magazine: Your latest album ‘Road Salt Two’, is clearly a sequel to 2010s ‘Road Salt One’, how would you sum up the way in which the album follows on from the previous story?

Pain Of Salvation: I’m not the one behind the concept, but I would say the story is told as a whole on both albums. At first we wanted to release them at once as a double album, and most of the music has been recorded at the same time as well. It seems to be different stories with different protagonists, and when you go deeper into the albums the characters and stories somehow intertwine with each other

Chemical Magazine: All of your albums are concept albums; do you ever experiment with the ways in which you tell a story?

Pain Of Salvation: I guess Daniel would answer that better than me, but from my point of view, most of the lyrics are a mix between fiction and self experiences.

Chemical Magazine: What normally comes first; the story or the music?

Pain Of Salvation: I don’t think there’s an absolute rule for that. I would say that the music comes first in most of the cases, but at the same time Daniel has some pieces of lyrics in his mind or at least a vague idea of what the song would be about. I know that once the music is recorded he’s usually working a lot to perfect the texts. On the other hand I’m pretty sure he has some already written, ready to be laid over the perfect matching song

Chemical Magazine: What inspired the two part album, were you unable to fully encompass the intended story in the last album, or did you always aspire for it to be split across multiple albums?

Pain Of Salvation: As I mentioned earlier, the initial plan was to release a double album Before starting the production we had so much material that fit together that we decided to try to gather all that in the same project because it would have been hard to incorporate these songs to any other future albums for instance Then tons of events occurred (label bankruptcy, tour cancellations), so when the dead line arrived we weren’t ready and we had to split the project in two records. So I think it’s safe to say that the whole inspiration comes from the same first idea. On a more general note, except for the Perfect Element concept and obviously Road Salt, each album stands for its own. There will never be a Entropia Part 2 for example

Chemical Magazine: So you’ve had a direct continuation with the ‘Road Salt’ concept; 2000′s ‘The Perfect Element, Part 1′ was originally intended as a three parter, but followed up in 2007 with ‘Scarsick’. When can we expect the finale to this saga?

Pain Of Salvation: It’s hard to know right now. I don’t know what is going to happen next musically, probably we will walk a completely different path, and it’s even harder to know anything about concepts! Guess the future will tell!

Chemical Magazine: Do you have any upcoming news you would like to share?

Pain Of Salvation: Maybe that as soon as we find a replacement for Johan we will spend some months on the road touring next year, so be prepared!

Chemical Magazine: Do you have any last messages for your fans?

Pain Of Salvation: Thanks for the endless support and we hope to see you all on the upcoming gigs in the UK!

Interviewer: Hayden Purcell