Review Summary: A late career highlight from the kings of Gothic Metal
Paradise Lost are a British metal band who have been around for over 3 decades at this point and are the pioneers of the gothic metal genre. This is a scene that started in the early 90s with a wave of bands from the North of England. It was an offshoot of both death metal and doom metal, but saw bands prioritizing melody and atmosphere over pure heaviness, aggression or punishment. The themes and tone tended to be much more introspective, focusing on self reflection, self loathing, often with a religious or spiritual slant, and the aesthetic was much more, well, gothic and moody instead of the violence and blood and guts of death metal or the epic mysticism of doom metal. Sonically, this would often be punctuated with cleaner approach to the vocals and instrumentation to put the emphasis on the melodic and melancholic elements.
With this new record, Ascension, being their 17th album, Paradise Lost are very much in their lane. They have tried and tested formula and a comfort zone, but it’s a formula that they have pretty nailed down. However, this is the band’s first album produced by founding member and lead guitarist, Greg Mackintosh, and no one else could better capture the sound and DNA of the band. Greg’s soaring, clean melodic guitars are perhaps the biggest staple of the bands sound and what he made them standout from their contemporaries, often cutting through the gloom and darkness to create a sense of emotion, grandness, and also make them slightly more welcoming to newer listeners.
The production on this album really is excellent and maybe the star of the show. While there is a very clear formula and things do start to feel samey as we go on – thick, chugging riff, those epic soaring leads and solos layered on top with Nick’s vocals – it’s a recipe that is playing to the band’s strength’s. Stylistically, this is perhaps closes to Tragic Idol, with those chunky riffs and Nick doing lots of shouted vocals throughout, but with more solos and more a more gloomy, morose atmosphere.
We kick the album off with
Serpent On The Cross, which is a hell of an opener. It’s actually a slower, doom-ier track, which is a bold choice to start an album with, but it feels truly epic and grand in scale. Straight from the jump we get the excellent, mournful sounding lead guitars from Greg which soar through the track. Nick Holmes’s growling vocals sound tremendous, particularly towards the end where he has these long several second long cries in the climax. It’s maybe the most electrifying vocals Nick has ever recorded. It sets the tone, it sounds massive, and is one of the most exciting, epic doom metal tracks of the year.
This is followed up with a bit of a switch up for
Tyrant’s Serenade, which is then probably the hook-iest song on the album. More monster lead guitars. This track actually reminded me slightly of Icon-era with just how catchy and infectious it is despite being so dour and moody. The chorus is killer and the interplay of the big clean vocals and the harsher vocals against the soaring riff sound excellent. It's a great hook, and a hell of a one-two punch opener.
From there we get
Salvation, which goes back head first into Doom metal territory as things open with the sound of church bells, creating a funeral-like vibe. It’s the longest track on the album and is appropriately massive and dreary, and again Nick switches up his vocal delivery from the first two tracks with more shouted lines to go along with the growls or the cleans.
Silence Like The Grave was the lead single for the album, and its another good track with more dense, heavy riffs and climbing leads. It was a decent single, and while it’s probably not on of the highlights of the album, it feels very representative of it.
Lay A Wreath Upon The World is a song I was a bit cold on when I heard it in isolation as a single, but here in the album it actually offers a welcome breather and change of pace from the rest of the first half. The acoustic guitars and whispered vocals to start creates a dreary neofolk vibe, and the female vocals that kick in also add some needed variety at a point in the album where things were at risky getting too samey too early. Lyrically, it is the most repetitive on the album by far, but the track does progress through a few different phases from that quieter opening to another sick solo at its crescendo.
The second half is where things do start to feel a bit repetitive. In isolation, some of the tracks such as
Diluvium,
Sirens and
This Stark Town all have again, more chunky riffs and catchy choruses, but do start to blur together. Though
Sirens does have one of the most massive sounding choruses here.
Savage Days features more acoustic guitars and a piano and sees Nick engaging in more clean singing, where he sounds pretty miserable.
The Precipice is another very doom orientated track, which probably makes this the most doom-slanted album they’ve put out since maybe even 1992’s Shade of God. It has the weakest, least memorable chorus on the album, but perhaps the most epic and enormous of all the solos.
We had a strong opener, and we get a killer closer too with
A Life Unknown. It’s hard to call any Paradise Lost song uplifting, especially when the lyrics are the total opposite as they are here, but this is about as close as any Paradise Lost track could get. Maybe
spirited or even
life-affirming are better ways of putting it, because this track has a lot of energy and the tone is more melodic that dreary, and it sees the album out with a bang.
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The high points on this album are some of the best tracks Paradise Lost have created of the last decade or so. While I don’t doubt for a second that there is some studio touching up happening, I will say Nick’s vocals sound maybe the best he’s ever sounded, and this has perhaps the most variation in his vocal performance from any Paradise Lost record I can recall, between the low doom metal growls, the high cleans, and the shouted lines. It’s also worth mentioning another reason why I love Nick’s vocals are that even when they are deep and growled, they’re still clean enough to understand the lyrics, and even when they are heavy, he still carries a sense of emotion in his voice. And its that emotion that really elevates tracks during the big, grand sounding climaxes which so many of the songs lead into.
The production is again, pretty excellent, and I might go far enough as to say this is the best they’ve ever
sounded
There’s always a caveat with bands of this tenure, that they are clearly in their comfort zone and therefore listening to an album like this can lend to some of it getting quite repetitive, and I definitely felt that here. But all in, this actually surpassed my expectations coming in. This is the best album they’ve had in maybe a decade or so, and it’s low key one of my favorite metal albums of the year, probably in my top 10.
