About the band: Pain of Salvation is a Swedish eclectic progressive metal band, who have released ten studio albums. Personally, I find their albums a bit uneven, but there are some great songs to find there. Pain of Salvation currently have one song in my list of about 200 best pop/rock songs of all time.
About the song: Beyond the pale is the closing song of their 2002 album Remedy Lane and it is superior over anything they have done. The original start, a repetitive simple guitar riff, sets the scene for a song with bewildering changes of pace and mood, full of energy and breathtaking moments, and with an intimacy in the lyrics that I cannot do justice in a short summary. The song ends with one of the greatest lines ever: "We will always be so much more human than we wish to be". Run time 9:55.
