Welcome to part three of The Culture Tsar’s Paradise Lost retrospective. Today we’ll take a look at Paradise Lost’s neo-doom period. The Culture Tsar has put together a Spotify playlist featuring two highlights from each album to help you get a sense of how the band’s sound has changed over time. Click here to check it out.
The “Neo-Doom” Era
After several years of experimentation, Paradise Lost slowly returned to their metal roots in the mid 00s. The band started using seven string guitars around this time, which reintroduced a heavy, lumbering element to their sound. Every release during this era seemed to be billed as a “return to form” by the insipid sort of metal music critics who insist on judging all bands by the way they sounded on their earliest albums. There was some truth to the claim, though, as the albums from this era do evoke the band’s “doomier” days. They also managed to keep most of what they’d learned about songwriting during their more experimental period.
In Requiem (2007): The first “return to form” album of this era, In Requiem isn’t that much heavier than Paradise Lost, but it does have a nastier, darker edge. While Nick Holmes isn’t quite growling like the old days, he’s inching closer and closer to it on many of these songs. The songwriting is still top notch, and there are some classic Paradise Lost tracks on this album. In Requiem definitely feels like a transitional album. It has the sound of a band trying things out before committing to a new direction. That’s not to say the album is confused or unfocused. There’s definitely a clear style underlying everything, but looking back at it now, you can definitely hear traces of the band’s future direction intermixed with some tried and true elements they’d perfected over the previous few albums.
Standout Tracks: “The Enemy”, “Ash and Debris”
Faith Divides Us – Death Unites Us (2009): This album saw the band fully commit to a twin seven string guitar attack and the results are immediately evident. The overall sound is much heavier, sweeping away the more nimble riffs (by Paradise Lost standards) of previous albums in favor of detuned chugging. It was the first Paradise Lost album that really “lumbered” in more than a decade, probably since 1993’s Icon. The vocals ventured even further into growling territory, although by this point Nick Holmes had come to incorporate a varied mix of growling, shouting, singing, and crooning that gave the songs a lot of dynamic range. At the time of its release, The Culture Tsar wasn’t all that crazy about this album, but it’s grown on him quite a bit over the years. “Faith Divides Us” is one of the very best songs Paradise Lost ever recorded, and there are a few other tracks that have aged quite nicely as the band continued to refine their classic doom sound for the 21st century.
Standout Tracks: “Faith Divides Us”, “Last Regret”
Tragic Idol (2012): Maybe it was the natural outgrowth of following the Icon-ish stylings of Faith Divides Us, or maybe it was because they’d just celebrated the album’s fifteenth anniversary a couple years earlier, but Tragic Idol is pretty much the follow up to Draconian Times the band never recorded. Much more nimble and melodic than Faith Divides Us, Tragic Idol is a lean and mean album that hits hard with hook-laden riffs and aggressive vocals. The band seemed more comfortable with the seven string guitars this time around, spending more time putting the extended range to creative use rather than simply chugging along on the low strings. If there had been any doubt about whether Paradise Lost could still bring its old school metal chops to bear, this album demolished that notion rather quickly. While not quite doomy enough for some old school fans, Tragic Idol proved the band had plenty of life left in it more than twenty years after their debut.
Standout Tracks: “Crucify”, “Tragic Idol”
The Plague Within (2015): If the previous three albums had teased longtime fans with hints of the band’s doom metal past, The Plague Within delivered on those promises. This one’s a doom metal album through and through, with slow, grinding guitar riffs and the sort of deep, growling vocals unseen since the days of Gothic. Everything about The Plague Within is crushingly heavy. Although the songs are well written and memorable, they make no effort to cater to anyone other than hardcore doom metal fans. This album is a (dark) love letter to the genre, lumbering from beginning to end like a massive fanged monster. There’s a lot of space in these songs, with the rhythm section moving so slowly at times that the whole structure threatens to collapse before the guitars come crashing back in. It’s hard to oversell how unrelentingly heavy this album gets. The Plague Within has a lot in common with Gothic, but the songs are so much better written and arranged. Rapturously received by fans, The Plague Within is already considered among the band’s best work.
Standout Tracks: “Beneath Broken Earth”, “Return to the Sun”
Medusa (2017): At first listen, Medusa is a bit of a disappointing follow-up to The Plague Within. None of the songs leap out immediately as Paradise Lost classics, with the singles sounding a bit like inferior versions of songs from previous albums. But that first impression is misleading because Medusa has a lot going on beneath the surface. It’s an album that digs its claws in deeper the more you listen to it. While nobody would ever describe Paradise Lost as a prog band, Medusa definitely has the trappings of a concept album. There’s an ominous undercurrent to the songs, an unsettling sense that they’re all building towards something terrible that never quite arrives. The album picks up the pace a bit compared to The Plague Within, and it has something in common with the nasty edge of Shades of God. After repeated listens, The Culture Tsar has come to like Medusa quite a bit, although his opinion is likely affected somewhat by the fact that he finally saw Paradise Lost for the first time while they touring in support of this album. It’s probably not an album new fans should start out with, but it will definitely deliver the goods after they have a better sense of the band’s style.
Standout Tracks: “From the Gallows”, “Medusa”
Thanks for coming along for The Culture Tsar’s retrospective of his favorite band. It’s a post he’s been putting off for quite some time, so it’s good to finally get it out there for everyone to see. Be sure to tune in every Monday for the regular Musical Discoveries post to expand your listening horizons.
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