Paradise Lost is preparing to release its highly anticipated 17th album, Ascension , on September 19th via Nuclear Blast Records . Produced by guitarist Gregor Mackintosh and mixed/mastered by Lawrence Mackrory , this is Paradise Lost's first album in five years, following the acclaimed Obsidian from 2020.
In an interview with Wikimetal , vocalist and founder Nick Holmes spoke about Paradise Lost's 37-year career, how the band helped shape styles like gothic, death, and doom metal, the return of drummer Jeff Singer , and the new album Ascension . He also explained what it's like to work on projects with distinct musical styles.
The 37th anniversary of Paradise Lost
Wikimetal: Paradise Lost is one of the bands responsible for shaping Doom Metal and laying the foundations for Gothic Metal. When you started your career in 1988, did you imagine you would become such an influential band? What were your influences?
Nick Holmes: No, when we started, we started the band because we were very, very passionate fans of the musical genre, doom metal and death metal. We were very, very big fans of it… Which was a kind of humble beginning, and the reason why we started the band. And yeah, we had no idea it would last this long. You can never predict anything. On this scale, I don't think, you know, so yeah, it's a surprise to us… As it is to anyone that we're still doing this after 37 years, or however long that is. But yeah, I mean, we started because we're big fans of this music. That's the reason why we started, and the reason why we're still going forward, continuing with it.
WM: Over the years, Paradise Lost has refined its sound, culminating in the trio of albums One Second , Host , and Believe In Nothing , which leans more towards gothic metal. How do you analyze this evolution?
NH: I think that, over a long career, we just cling a little to certain elements that we did in the past, and then we discover a new interest in them as well, because everything kind of goes in a vicious circle. It's like haircuts, eventually you'll have the same haircut you had when you were younger. I mean, I won't, but… you know what I mean? You can rekindle interests that you thought you had lost, and then they come back.
And especially in music, we've kind of gone back, mainly in the last 10 years, we've really found a new love and nostalgia for the old sounds, and for the old death metal and doom metal bands, and we've brought that back in the last, more or less, 10 years. When we made the Host , we were perhaps in a more experimental area of our lives at that time. But yeah, we've always followed that, followed our hearts, written and recorded what we felt was right at the time.
New album Ascension
WM: And then we come to the new release, Ascension , which brings back a bit more of Paradise Lost's roots, but with an evolution of the band's characteristic sound. What was the production process like?
NH: We started writing it about 5 years ago… Just before the pandemic, and then we had 2 years where we didn't do anything with Paradise Lost, and then we picked it up again. It's been about 5 years since we started. We had plenty of time to think about how we could change things, and we also re-recorded the Icon in the meantime.
And we also launched a side project, me and Greg [ Gregor Mackintosh , Paradise Lost guitarist], Host … We had plenty of time to think about where we wanted to go with this Ascension .
And we just want to make things more varied within what we do. It's good to have a varied album. We don't want all the songs to sound the same, we want that variation in singing styles too, and just to make things interesting for ourselves. We write, we record, and we hope people listen.
WM: Jeff Singer, who played on the album In Requiem and participated in some shows, is back. How was this readjustment?
NH: Jeff left the band for very honest and humble reasons. He just wanted to be with his family and watch his children grow up, so he kind of left the band to have a normal life, but his children are grown now and he wants to get back into playing drums, and we've always been friends with him all along. He was always a great addition to the band back then. It was very natural to have him back. He's an old friend of ours, and it's great to have him back, so everything has been going very well so far.
Projects beyond Paradise Lost
WM: You're also part of Bloodbath and Host. Bloodbath has a death metal sound, and Host is closer to gothic electro; they even did a very interesting version of 'I Ran' by A Flock Of Seagulls. What's it like singing in bands with such different musical approaches?
NH: It's not that different, I mean, it's all kind of downbeat and dark music. One is extreme metal, and the other is extreme pop, dark pop, or whatever. Host was basically a project, it's not like we were a band. Whereas Bloodbath is a band, it's not like we were touring, it was just another project. This is something completely different anyway.
Bloodbath is part of my musical heritage anyway. I came from the death metal scene, being in that band was completely natural for me, kind of embracing that kind of music anyway. And we also had a lot of fun with it. I mean, we only do festivals, we don't tour with Bloodbath, but it all kind of fell into place. Based purely on, as I said, I come from a death metal background anyway, so it wasn't that difficult to get into a project like that.
The debut at Monsters of Rock Brazil in 1995
WM: Paradise Lost has many fans in Brazil and is always performing in our country. Their first appearance was at the Monsters Of Rock festival in 1995 on the Draconian Times tour. Do you remember that first performance? Incidentally, the show at Bangers Open Air this year started with the same song as the 1995 performance, 'Enchantment'.
NH: Yes, that was during the Ozzy Osbourne . We debuted at Monsters of Rock with Ozzy Osbourne, Alice Cooper, Faith No More … Yes, it was incredible to be part of that tour, and being such big fans of Alice Cooper, especially, it was amazing to do. Such big shows, and, you know, there were so many people at the shows, we had never played in that kind of place, arenas, we had never done that before.
Almost nowhere, I don't think we'd ever done that before. It was a really great tour, you can be sure of that. And again, it was amazing to tour with Ozzy, and I mean, but especially for us, Ozzy was a big name, so it was incredible that we did it.
WM: Can we expect a Paradise Lost performance in Brazil on this upcoming tour?
NH: Yes, we are going… Well, we just went to Brazil, but I mean, we hope to go back and do another trip there to promote the new album. So, yes, we'll start the European tour in October, through November. And then we'll see what happens next year, and hopefully we can come back and do some of our shows in Brazil.
WM: Leave a message for your Brazilian fans.
NH: We can only thank you for your support over the years and we hope to see you next year. We really hope you enjoy the new album, Ascension .
