Nearly three decades and nine albums in, Pain are now not so much a side-project as a permanent vehicle for mainman Peter Tägtgren’s electro-metal urges, that sometimes gets left in the garage. ‘Why so serious / Why so furious / Don’t push me, I don’t want to grow up,’ he sings on Push The Pusher, and it’s certainly a different tone to Hypocrisy’s studious death metal.
Pain have always had a darkly lustrous sense of sardonic gothic fun, but this time out it’s even more overt. Originally released during lockdown, Party In My Head steals its verse structures from Neil Young’s Rockin’ In The Free World and threads them into a huge party anthem. Peter has described Go With The Flow as his 80s Depeche Mode song, and it fits the bill with its high-energy beat, big chorus and wobbly banks of synth.
