BE (Pain of Salvation album)
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| Studio album by Pain of Salvation | ||||
| Released | September 27, 2004 | |||
| Recorded | Sweden, February–July 2004 | |||
| Genre | Progressive rock, art rock, symphonic rock | |||
| Length | 75:53 | |||
| Label | InsideOut Music | |||
| Producer | Daniel Gildenlöw | |||
| Pain of Salvation chronology | ||||
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| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |
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| Sputnikmusic |
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| Silencio Hungary |
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| RevelationZ |
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| Sea of Tranquillity |
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BE is Pain of Salvation's fifth studio album, released by InsideOutMusic in September 2004. It is a concept album focusing on the existence of God and humankind. Along with the band it features a nine-part orchestra, The Orchestra of Eternity, which features prominently throughout the album. This is the last album to feature Kristoffer Gildenlöw on bass. The album is the first Pain of Salvation album to be divided into more than three chapters.
The band performed it live as a rock opera. It was released as "BE" (Original Stage Production).
BE attempts to explore the many facets of human existence. It begins with the narration of Animae, someone or something who/that has existed for as long as he/she/it can remember and contemplates the nature of his/her/its existence and then begins a journey of understanding with the words: "I will call myself GOD and I will spend the rest of forever trying to figure out who I am". The story continues from there. The characters that appear and disappear throughout the story are as follows:
The sound and style are somewhat more varied than previous Pain of Salvation albums, but at the same time, calling upon those previous albums as influences. The album includes: narrative passages; a folk-like song; a gospel-prayer-like song; a church-hymn-like song; progressive metal songs; a classical piano/strings piece; a conversation with a radio in the background; news readings; and even a song that would not be out of place in a Broadway musical. Another song consists entirely of voice messages to be left on "God's answering machine". To approach this song, the band asks the subscribers of their newsletter to call a certain phone number and say what ever they would want to say to God.
In writing "BE", Daniel Gildenlöw used many resources for information, insights and inspiration. These can be viewed at the "BE" home page, and are intended as "points of departure" for listeners to continue their "own journey through "BE" ".
[Chinassiah] is a word puzzle, as so many other titles and phrases on the album. It derives from a combination of China (for fragility and beauty, but also man made) and Messiah (for saviour but also the notion of something in which we, humanity, put our faith for salvation). Other puzzles on the same theme is Machinassiah (as above but with the adding of Machine symbolizing industry, artificial and a moving system), Machinageddon (as above but replacing Messiah with Armageddon for destruction and a negative spiral) and Machinauticus (as above but replacing Armageddon with Nauticus for searching, quest, lost and the creation of the probe).
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