I kinda lost track of Paradise Lost over the years. In my defence, it’s easily done – there’s so much new music to listen to, after all – and around the turn of the Millennium some long-term fans had implied that their best days were behind them. But here’s their new album, Faith Divides Us, Death Unites Us (a pretty apposite title, given the religio-political situation in the United States right now, not to mention the world at large), neatly putting the lie to any such nay-saying. I wouldn’t say it’s their best work (I have the prejudice of age on my side, and Gothic was a very formative album for me while I was at school), but it’s surely a return to form.
Everything you want is in here somewhere: hugely down-tuned thunderchords, stately and doom-ridden progressions, moody and understated lead lines and solo work… and Lucifer’s own bombastic charm behind the microphone. While the gothic thrash style that Paradise Lost pioneered has been mocked and spoofed (most notably by Type O Negative), they were always somewhat lacking in talented peers, with the end result that Faith Divides Us… ends up sounding contemporary and classic at once – classic because it draws on the aesthetics of late-period thrash without tying itself to its inherently cheesy retroisms, contemporary because no one else has ever really tried to take them on at their own game. And no, I’m not saying there are no other “gothic metal” bands besides them; my point is that the majority of those other bands either sound much more goth-y, or much more metal. The remainder sound just like Paradise Lost… only not as good.
Few are the bands who get to define and rule their own subgenre, but it’s something of a double-edged sword in many cases, and one could argue that Paradise Lost are one of them. Oh, sure, they’ve got a career as long as your arm, and they get cited as influences by all sorts of luminaries from the metal sphere and beyond. But they’ve always remained outsiders to some extent, a consistent yet marginal territory on the borderlands of metal… and frankly that endears them to me almost as much as their music does. Sticking to your guns for the best part of two decades takes a certain strength of vision, and to retain your core songwriting line-up for that long is almost unheard of – especially when you’ve veered off and dabbled in darkwave electronica for a while.
The legacy of those sideways excursions can still be heard, of course, most notably in the epic sprawl of the title track, and album closer “In Truth”; there’s a melodic and structural suss underpinning the tunes that is hard to find in heavy music these days. But make no mistake – Faith Divides Us, Death Unites Us is a proper metal album all through, albeit one that drops the fancy modern studio trickery in favour of a lean but meaty “real band” sound. Averaging between four and five minutes in length, the tracks give Paradise Lost plenty of space to explore their ideas without getting too self-indulgent about it, and the album as a whole has a coherent sound and theme – another rarity in the iTunes age of the single-track download.
It’s about all this former Paradise Lost fan could have asked for, in other words. Whether Faith Divides Us, Death Unites Us will be the album that finally gets them noticed by a wider audience on their home turf remains to be seen… but given they’ve had fifteen-odd years of popularity and relentless touring in Europe to keep them busy, I doubt they’re going to lose any sleep if it isn’t.
I kinda lost track of Paradise Lost over the years. In my defence, it’s easily done – there’s so much new music to listen to, after all – and around the turn of the Millennium some long-term fans had implied that their best days were behind them. But here’s their new album, Faith Divides Us, Death Unites Us (a pretty apposite title, given the religio-political situation in the United States right now, not to mention the world at large), neatly putting the lie to any such nay-saying. I wouldn’t say it’s their best work (I have the prejudice of age on my side, and Gothic was a very formative album for me while I was at school), but it’s surely a return to form.
Everything you want is in here somewhere: hugely down-tuned thunderchords, stately and doom-ridden progressions, moody and understated lead lines and solo work… and Lucifer’s own bombastic charm behind the microphone. While the gothic thrash style that Paradise Lost pioneered has been mocked and spoofed (most notably by Type O Negative), they were always somewhat lacking in talented peers, with the end result that Faith Divides Us… ends up sounding contemporary and classic at once – classic because it draws on the aesthetics of late-period thrash without tying itself to its inherently cheesy retroisms, contemporary because no one else has ever really tried to take them on at their own game. And no, I’m not saying there are no other “gothic metal” bands besides them; my point is that the majority of those other bands either sound much more goth-y, or much more metal. The remainder sound just like Paradise Lost… only not as good.
Few are the bands who get to define and rule their own subgenre, but it’s something of a double-edged sword in many cases, and one could argue that Paradise Lost are one of them. Oh, sure, they’ve got a career as long as your arm, and they get cited as influences by all sorts of luminaries from the metal sphere and beyond. But they’ve always remained outsiders to some extent, a consistent yet marginal territory on the borderlands of metal… and frankly that endears them to me almost as much as their music does. Sticking to your guns for the best part of two decades takes a certain strength of vision, and to retain your core songwriting line-up for that long is almost unheard of – especially when you’ve veered off and dabbled in darkwave electronica for a while.
The legacy of those sideways excursions can still be heard, of course, most notably in the epic sprawl of the title track, and album closer “In Truth”; there’s a melodic and structural suss underpinning the tunes that is hard to find in heavy music these days. But make no mistake – Faith Divides Us, Death Unites Us is a proper metal album all through, albeit one that drops the fancy modern studio trickery in favour of a lean but meaty “real band” sound. Averaging between four and five minutes in length, the tracks give Paradise Lost plenty of space to explore their ideas without getting too self-indulgent about it, and the album as a whole has a coherent sound and theme – another rarity in the iTunes age of the single-track download.
It’s about all this former Paradise Lost fan could have asked for, in other words. Whether Faith Divides Us, Death Unites Us will be the album that finally gets them noticed by a wider audience on their home turf remains to be seen… but given they’ve had fifteen-odd years of popularity and relentless touring in Europe to keep them busy, I doubt they’re going to lose any sleep if it isn’t.
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Tags: doom, Faith Divides Us Death Unites Us, goth, gothic metal, metal, Paradise Lost, thrash
