Paatos - Breathing

(CD 2010,50:08, Glassville records)

The tracks:
  1- Gone(5:52)
  2- Fading Out(3:36)
  3- Shells(5:58)
  4- In That Room(4:58)
  5- Andrum(1:25)
  6- No More Rollercoaster(4:15)
  7- Breathing(5:56)
  8- Smärtan(4:30)
  9- Surrounded(4:48)
10- Ploing, My Friend(0:56)
11- Precious(4:25)
12- Over And Out(3:31)

Paatos Website        samples        Glassville Records


Paatos is a progressive rock group based in Stockholm, Sweden. The band shows influences from a wide variety of styles and genres. You can call it post-rock, art rock or even gothic rock. Paatos describes their own music as Cinematic Rock. The early band with Ulf Rockis Ivarsson (bass), Ricard Huxflux Nettermalm (drums, percussion, violin and keyboards) and Peter Nylander (guitar, keyboards, flutes and trombone) was formed in 2000 as a rhythm section backing up Swedish Folk Rock singer Turid. Petronella Nettermalm soon joined the band on vocals and cello. In 2002 the first studio album, Timeloss was released and two years later they recorded their second album Kallocain. The album was mixed by Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree. A European tour with the Dutch progressive rock band The Gathering followed. Silence Of Another Kind was a studio album, released in 2006. After extensive touring around Europe, sometimes as headliner or as support for Porcupine Tree, they recorded several shows which resulted in a live album called Sensors. At the end of 2008/early 2009 Paatos started writing and recording music again for the new album to be called Breathing with featured a new bass player with the funny name Rockis.

My general opinion of Breathing is that the music is too moderate and shows that progressive rock is more than just writing a few songs. The songs of Paatos miss a kind of punch. There is a big lack of power and emotion in most of the songs. For example one of the last songs Precious could be a played some 15 years ago by The Gathering. It's an easy tune with simple chords. No outbursts of guitars or keyboards. A chorus sung by a nagging adolescent female voice. Smärtan is a another silly song. I fell asleep. Other bands like Anathema create these kinds of songs in a fascinating way not heard here. Also on the longest song Shells it became difficult for me to suppress the sleep. The music continues so slow and drags for more than 5 minutes.

In short, I summarize this CD with just two words: Nice try

**+ Cor Smeets (edited by Robert James Pashman)

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