Pain: We Come In Peace

Industrial metallers surpass the party spirit

You can trust Louder Our experienced team has worked for some of the biggest brands in music. From testing headphones to reviewing albums, our experts aim to create reviews you can trust. Find out more about how we review.

Peter Tägtgren has done some amazingly awesome things in his career and this fancy digipak contains one of them. On the surface, it’s top value for money – around five hours worth of audio/visual entertainment spread across three discs with a plush colour booklet and a few slick promo videos thrown in for good measure.

The problem is, the live audio doesn’t deliver anywhere near the level of ferocity you’d get at one of their shows and the backstage footage is about as crazy as a school disco (with booze and a better soundtrack).

But lurking among such disappointments is a bona fide gem and that’s their Masters Of Rock arena show. Dressed in a straitjacket, Peter reminds us all what he’s capable of and there are even guest vocals from Exodus’s Rob Dukes on Shut Your Mouth. From the AC/DC-esque slur of Dirty Woman to the off-kilter Americana of Have A Drink On Me, this footage alone is worth forking out for. It’s just a shame about the rest.

Natasha Scharf
Deputy Editor, Prog

Contributing to Prog since the very first issue, writer and broadcaster Natasha Scharf was the magazine’s News Editor before she took up her current role of Deputy Editor, and has interviewed some of the best-known acts in the progressive music world from ELP, Yes and Marillion to Nightwish, Dream Theater and TesseracT. Starting young, she set up her first music fanzine in the late 80s and became a regular contributor to local newspapers and magazines over the next decade. The 00s would see her running the dark music magazine, Meltdown, as well as contributing to Metal Hammer, Classic Rock, Terrorizer and Artrocker. Author of music subculture books The Art Of Gothic and Worldwide Gothic, she’s since written album sleeve notes for Cherry Red, and also co-wrote Tarja Turunen’s memoirs, Singing In My Blood. Beyond the written word, Natasha has spent several decades as a club DJ, spinning tunes at aftershow parties for Metallica, Motörhead and Nine Inch Nails. She’s currently the only member of the Prog team to have appeared on the magazine’s cover.