Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Paradise Lost
Label: Nuclear Blast
Release: 2017
Length: 42:41
Rating: 3.5/5
Time flies, and Paradise Lost, the great veterans and fathers of doom metal from the UK, have apparently decided to run a full development cycle. All the way back to their roots. A marathon of a journey. They’re once again playing pure-blooded doom metal, with elements of extreme metal, death metal to be precise, shamelessly at home in it. The transition actually started with the excellent »Faith Divide Us,.. Death Unite Us«, and through »Tragic Idol« and »The Plague Within« the extreme elements in their doom-based songwriting kept getting built up and dug deeper. And with »Medusa«, in terms of stylistic transition and the return to their roots, Paradise Lost have clearly closed the whole circle.
In fact, »Medusa«, which is already the fifteenth Paradise Lost studio album, would be more than excellent if it didn’t come across a little cautious at times, and if it didn’t offer, by the band’s usual standards, a few ideas that the pioneers of doom have already tried in the past. »Icon« and »Draconian Times«? The new album »Medusa« plugs into them with no trouble at all (take the songs The Longest Winter and/or Blood & Chaos). That realization was cashed in more successfully by the more varied, idea-rich »The Plague Within«. The production is once again rollingly raw, the guitar phrases crush devastatingly as their ruinous gloom swallows every ray of light in front of it. »Medusa« sounds uncompromising in that respect and feeds the listener hellish energy. In the mix, only the drumming of newcomer Waltteri Väyrynen, a young guy who’s MacKintosh’s bandmate from Vallenfyre, sits a bit low in the sound picture. Maybe I’m doing the band an injustice with that remark, since the riffs are so uncompromisingly dominant that the rhythmic drive automatically loses its lead, but still, the snare, kick and toms could have been cranked up a notch.
So Paradise Lost once again conjure up vistas of hopelessness, apocalypse, transience and the smallness of human life with featherlight ease. The album is also packed with socially critical messages. Paradise Lost remain petrified gloomsters and melancholics without equal, who will always prefer to rule in hell rather than serve in heaven, that much is clear. The compositions of the new era thus work superbly in fusing doom and death metal elements, and the sound of the new album, in its deathly mood and sheer nightmarish energy, is carried over faithfully from »The Plague Within«.
»Medusa« opens in grand style. With the longest song of Paradise Lost’s career, an eight-and-a-half-minute ominous doom/death metal requiem and a proper rotting club of a track called Fearless Sky. The sincerity of the guitar phrases and Holmes’s singing/growling keeps all the authenticity of the completed transition on the new album too. Today this fusion of doom and death elements sounds, of course, matured and upgraded for Paradise Lost, and there’s no shortage of freshly found inspiration, either in MacKintosh, who played for Vallenfyre, or in Holmes, who sings for Bloodbath. His combination of hollow baritone and growl works brilliantly across the whole album and sounds supremely confident throughout. Let’s hope Holmes carries this studio form over to the concert stage as well.
As said. A very good new album from a band that’s only occasionally nagged by the feeling that it’s playing things a bit safe, that it delivers a little less variety than its predecessor, and that it’s still missing a more distinctive, ravenous doom/death metal riff or two. Otherwise, »Medusa« brings content that, given the pedigree of experimentation the band has been so well known and respected for over the years, amounts to expressive treading water for Paradise Lost. On the other hand, it’s an album that from head to toe serves up exactly what Paradise Lost are at their artistic core and what they’ve always been best at creating. It doesn’t get more honest than this! A true fan of this band has had »Medusa« at home for ages now.
Paradise Lost – Blood & Chaos (official video):
Lineup
Nick Holmes – vocals
Greg Mackintosh – guitar, keyboards
Aaron Aedy – guitar
Steve Edmondson – bass
Waltteri Väyrynen – drums
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Heather Mackintosh – backing vocals on track no. 6
Steve Crobar – backing vocals on track no. 2
Production
Jaime Gomez Arellano & Paradise Lost
Tracklist
01. Fearless Sky (8:30)
02. Gods Of Ancient (5:50)
03. From The Gallows (3:42)
04. The Longest Winter (4:31)
05. Medusa (6:20)
06. No Passage For The Dead (4:16)
07. Blood & Chaos (3:51)
08. Until The Grave (5:41)
