A Vidclip a Day: Pain of Salvation, “Ashes”

Today, I needed something very strong – for cleansing the soul – and came, logically, to Pain Of Salvation. I found “Ashes”:

I taste your sorrow and you taste my pain
Drawn to each other for every stain
Licking the layers of soot from your skin
Your tears work my crust to let yourself in

Touching you harder
Touching you harder now

As we walk through the ashes
I whisper your name
A taste of pain to cling to
As we walk through the ashes
You whisper my name
Who’s the one with the sickest mind…
now?

The album from which this song is taken, The Perfect Element, Part I (2000), looks at the devastated lives of two people who wander, hurt, and go in circles trying to make something out of the nothing they have been given. Deprived of their chances by the sexual lust and the financial control of the empowered, they meet here, at the beginning of their journey, and encounter little else beside “Ashes”. As with every tragic story, this one points to the wrongs in our world, exposes them to the light of day so that we can recognise and eliminate them. This process is the Pain Of Salvation the band so aptly named themselves after. Listen and know. Q. W3ary over & out.