Pain of Salvation!

If this were a competition, I believe IIT Madras is leading by a really large margin. After getting Opeth to perform at Saarang a couple years back, they had Pain of Salvation performing in Jan 2011. After the debacle of Katatonia at IIT Bombay last year, this concert was something I was really looking forward to, and it did not disappoint.

Like my previous trip, Pavan and I planned a weekend trip to Chennai with the concert scheduled on Saturday, and a visit to Pondicherry planned for the second. The 1000-rupee tickets we booked online ensured we got "VIP passes", meaning we got reaaally close to the stage. We got to see one of the opening bands - Bicycle Days, which was quite good. PoS took the stage around 8.45, after a really long sound check. The set list was the standard they've been doing, with minor variations. Daniel Gildenlöw has a very good voice, and each of the songs were done quite quite brilliantly. A guitar mishap during the show didn't stop the show, and Daniel got the drummer to do a superb solo during the time it too to get the guitars back on. With great stage presence, Daniel is quite a Dickinson on stage, garnering lots of crowd participation, and performing antics like climbing the trusses to play a solo standing on the speakers.

I didn't get any free T-shirts, and there was no PoS merchandise on sale, so I ended up returning empty handed. This trip turned out to be fully worth the bomb I spent flying to and from Chennai, and the overnight stay (and the awesome Chettinad chicken). Woohoo! Pain of Salvation rocks!

Some pics from the show: