Review of the Album "Gothic" by the Band Paradise Lost

Most heavy metal fans or maybe only some of them might not think of the United Kingdom’s Paradise Lost as a doom and death metal band. But that’s the style that these guys played in during their early years as a band. Their 1991 studio album "Gothic" is an example of this slower doom and death metal style and it is pretty good!

You can think of this song is being a slower version of a Battlelore song. I also hear some Dreams of Sanity sound in this song as the Gothic rock sounds are present.

I can even hear a certain feel of early Amorphis in this album as the song called Dead Emotion shows us. How do I know this? I have listened to enough heavy metal to be able to detect the influence through the riffing. The song Shattered can remind listeners of the album Velvet Darkness They Fear by Norway’s Theatre of Tragedy. The song is about staring at the walls as a person feels that the truth of his past continues to haunt him as he goes to bed at night. Rapture (not the song by Morbid Angel) has melodic riffing that would be used by Swedish band Opeth around 1995 and 1996. When “weak” men commit sins, some might say that these men deserve to be punished for these sins but it is better to ask the Lord GOD for the forgiveness of these sins. Nick Holmes takes his vocal work a step higher, growling in a certain way that we would eventually hear in 1994 when Tomi Koivusaari would eventually do such death metal growls for Amorphis. What comes next is the first instrumental song on this album called Angel Tears. Melodically, it sounds like something out of the play book of an early Florida death metal band such as Chuck Schuldiner’s former band.

Well, even though it was mentioned earlier in the review that “Gothic” is pretty good, listening through this album a 3^rd time tells me that what we hear from British veterans Paradise Lost is a very solid album with many different bands influenced by these guys and Nick Holmes showing that he can do some pretty decent death metal growls! The song Silent shows Nick’s ability to growl enough that he begins to sound like Mark “Barney” Greenway! Life is full of ups and downs and there have been times of peace and times of war and morals have certainly declined as the song points out. This solid doom and death metal album ends with the second instrumental song called Desolate. The song sounds like something the band Cradle of Filth would write and the sound of the bells chiming lets us know that this is the end of the album. There is very little to complain about in this album and Gothic is one of the best death metal albums in the history of the genre!