Entropia

Entropia
  • Album Info
  • 1997
  • Avalon (later InsideOutMusic)

1. ! (Foreword)
2. Welcome to Entropia
3. Winning A War
4. People Passing By
5. Oblivion Ocean
6. Stress
7. Revival
8. Void Of Her
9. To The End
10. Circles
11. Nightmist
12. Plains Of Dawn
13. Leaving Entropia (Epilogue)

Entropia is Pain of Salvation’s first studio album. It is a concept album concerning the story of a family in a fictional society that is torn apart by a war. The title is a portmanteau of Entropy (from thermodynamics, the measure of disorder present in a system), and Utopia (the ideal society). This is the only album to feature Daniel Magdic on guitar.

Entropia was first released by the Japanese company Marquee on their Avalon label in August 1997. Following favourable reviews and positive fan reactions in the progressive rock/metal world, Marquee decided to fly Daniel over to Tokyo a week in October 1997 to promote the album. While in Tokyo, Daniel featured in various TV and radio shows, did interviews for the Japanese metal press, and performed in selected record stores. Around this time, purchasing albums through online record stores was commonplace, and fans from around the world began to do so with Entropia.

It was subsequently released in Romania (1998 on Rocris Discs), in Europe (September 1999 on InsideOut Music), in South America (September 1999 on Hellion), and in the USA (2000 on InsideOut America). The release of an album by different labels in different countries is characteristic of an emerging band’s first album, and their lack of a long-term contract with a major record label.

“This album is a very complex concept that is pretty hard to grasp. It is about a family in a war situation, about a father that fails to protect his family, about a child who needs a father and not a soldier, about a society that kills and excludes and then takes its hand away from the remains in shock of what it has become. It is about a world I have chosen to call Entropia, which is a combination of the two words “Entropy” and “Utopia”. Entropia is suspiciously similar to our world.”

— Daniel Gildenlöw