Author: Rok Klemše
Artist: Paradise Lost
Label: Century Media
Release: year_month
Length: 50:10
Rating: 4/5
Britain’s godfathers of death/doom metal, Paradise Lost, went back to the heavier gothic roots of albums like Draconian Times a good eight years ago with the warmly received In Requiem, after years of experimenting with Depeche Mode-style sounds. From In Requiem on, the only way for Paradise Lost was up, and the next two albums confirmed it, once again, if to a lesser degree, running through that clash of aggression and melancholy the band is so known for. It looked like the main culprit behind the band’s metal rebirth was Gregor Mackintosh, even more so thanks to his filthy death/doom/crust project Vallenfyre, and it was only a matter of time before Paradise Lost headed back down the old »death« metal paths. Or, put differently, a question of whether Holmes’ vocal cords could handle it.
Well, Holmes didn’t want to be left in his colleague’s dust, and he didn’t just stick a toe into death metal waters, he dove in headfirst when it was officially revealed last year that he’d become the new vocalist of the Swedish death metal supergroup Bloodbath. That death metal had crept into Paradise Lost too became crystal clear with the first single No Hope In Sight, and with The Plague Within the doom daddies prove that this new-old look of the band isn’t just middle-aged musicians’ yearning for a nostalgic trip down memory lane.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here is the inscription over the gates of Dante’s Inferno, and it could just as well be plastered across The Plague Within in big letters, because Paradise Lost fling the gates to darkness wide open with the gloomy, morbid No Hope In Sight, which shows they haven’t sounded this »metal« in ages and is at the same time the perfect blend of »new and old« Paradise Lost. The guitars of the Mackintosh/Aedy duo are shoved right back up front, and Mackintosh serves up plenty of standout guitar moves that beautifully complement Holmes’ guttural screams. The vocalist himself is behind the album’s most pleasant surprise: his raw growl sounds way better than on Grand Morbid Funeral, where he sounded weak and not all that convincing, while on The Plague Within his growls on tracks like No Hope In Sight and especially Beneath Broken Earth sound mighty and menacing, almost like they did on Lost Paradise a quarter century ago.
The album’s standout quality is, first and foremost, its sincerity, because you can feel that the return of death metal elements isn’t some trend-chasing move. The raw, aggressive parts never sound forced, and the dynamic between deadly doom blows, faster guitar passages and mid-tempo gothic elements easily convinces you that this is exactly what the band set out to achieve. Perhaps the best proof of that is the album’s central and longest track, Beneath Broken Earth, a perfect example of the death/doom classics that built the band’s status twenty-odd years ago. The dark, sinister atmosphere painted by Mackintosh’s sorrowful riffs, with a fantastic Holmes on top, whose monumental roar on lines like »Hail to nothingness/You wish to die!« cruelly and uncompromisingly reminds you of human mortality, is something we haven’t heard from Paradise Lost in years and years.
But if on one side they offer the ultra-slow and morbid Beneath Broken Earth, on the other they probably deliver the fastest track of Paradise Lost’s entire career, the album’s second peak, Flesh From Bone, which stays truest to the band’s death metal roots and hits almost blastbeat speeds in the verses. The rest of the tracks don’t lag far behind that pair in quality either, since there’s only a sprinkle of »filler« material on the album. Once again, elements of classical music (the opening of An Eternity of Lies, with piano and violin, creates a similarly crushing feeling to Lux Aeterna at the end of Requiem For A Dream) and choir vocals (Return to the Sun) paint a rich, sacral atmosphere, there’s a sludgy detour with Punishment Through Time that strongly recalls Crowbar, and the only real miss turns out to be the odd Cry Out.
Calling the new album a total return to the Lost Paradise era would be overstating it, but The Plague Within would certainly have found its place easily among Gothic, Shades of God or Icon. True, there are plenty of bands out there these days who handle death/doom better than Paradise Lost, but with The Plague Within they prove who the daddies of the genre are, and after more than a quarter century in the game they still manage to give birth to a mighty batch of material that’s fully on par with the band’s strongest moments. On top of that, The Plague Within may be just the foundation of the “new” Paradise Lost, one that will only really settle in and find its footing on the successor, which could deliver a truly perfect Paradise Lost classic. And as Milton wrote, it still holds true: »Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.«
Paradise Lost will bring the plague to Mostovna in Solkan on October 29, 2015!
Line-up
Nick Holmes – vocals
Gregor Mackintosh – guitar, keyboards
Aaron Aedy – guitar
Stephen Edmondson – bass
Adrian Erlandsson – drums
Production
Jaime Gomez Arellano
Tracklist
1. No Hope In Sight
2. Terminal
3. An Eternity of Lies
4. Punishment Through Time
5. Beneath Broken Earth
6. Sacrifice the Flames
7. Victim of the Past
8. Flesh From Bone
9. Cry Out
10. Return to the Sun
