When it was released in 2002, Remedy Lane was regarded as the Swedish prog metal band’s breakthrough album; the one that got them noticed by a wider audience. Now, mainman Daniel Gildenlow has remixed it, with help from Jens Bogren.
What’s come out of this is a brighter, sharper, more effective album. Having had the chance to live with the songs for so long, Gildenlow understands them better, and has been able to bring out hitherto buried sonic inferences, making the conceptual journey of the principle character to self realisation more viable. It shows the worth of actually giving music time to develop in its own right, before going into the studio. Because, while the original was impressive, it really now appears to be no more than a demo for what is done here.
But that’s not all, because also included in this package is a live performance of the entire album, recorded at the ProgPower festival in 2014. Again, this gives a new slant on the music and underlying themes. And onstage, yet another outlook and attitude comes into view, with the band reacting to the crowd as much as to each other.
It would be easy to dismiss this revisiting of the album as no better than window dressing. However, this is so much more than that. Remedy Lane is more alive than ever, and one feels the approaches here are more than vindicated. Clever stuff.
