Style: Doom/death metal, melodic death metal
Primary Emotions/Themes: The folly of man, judgement for ones own sins
Thoughts: Paradise Lost is one of the longest running bands I've ever been into. I got into them with Draconian Times and have been following them ever since. Few bands have shifted styles as frequently as they in the past thirty years. Fewer still have retained as consistent level of quality as Paradise Lost.
Paradise Lost's career can be described very much like a boomerang. Starting out as one of the pioneers of doom/death the band's first few albums were uncompromisingly brutal. The first big change came with Shades of God. The band started adding in a bit more progressive elements and more complex song patterns. Icon stripped everything down to almost a rock and roll styled gothic metal album. Draconian Times saw the band embrace the gothic metal fully and nearly drop all harsh vocals. One Second was the final death knell for harsh vocals, and Host saw the band taking on a Depeche Mode style. The metal was completely gone at this point.
I remember at the turn of the millennium, much of the metal community had completely cast aside the band saying that they were no longer part of the metal community. The thing is that Host is a fucking fantastic album. Even 20 years later it holds up as one of their top albums for me. It also serves as the linchpin for their entire career.
With each successive album the band came back a little more to their metal roots. In Requiem resembled Draconian Times in a lot of ways. Faith Divides Us - Death Unites Us Had hints of Icon. Tragic Idol had much of the same melodies and tendencies that Shades of God did. So when The Plague Within was announced I was just a bit more than excited. Nick had recently started growling again in their compilation released a few years prior (and in Bloodbath). All signs pointed to The Plague Within being a true return to their death metal roots. It was that... and more.
The opener - No Hope In Sight - shows the listener exactly what is going to happen during the course of most of the album. Right away a killer riff starts out, both heavy and catchy. Within a few moments Nick starts growling. To say that I was excited was an understatement. This was the moment I had been waiting for for years. All of their recent music would have been better with growls instead of the half harsh James Hetfield impersonation. Now Nick had finally come home, this is what Paradise Lost's metal should sound like.
The band goes through a lot of styles on this album, some goth rock influenced, others even have touches of the blues in them. The predominant style here though is doom/death. There is an excellent mix of clean and harsh vocals throughout the album, and for once the band fully utilizes all of their capability.
A few songs deserve special mention as they are a step above the rest. I've already mentioned the opener. Beneath Buried Earth is possibly the heaviest song the band has ever written, including the debut. It's pure unadulterated doom/death at it's best. Cry Out while having touches of blues in the chord progression has one of the coolest middle sections of any song on the album. When Nick screams "Cry out! Sinners against the world!" it's infectious.
There are a couple of duds on here too, but they hardly detract from the experience as a whole. The Plague Within has been out for nearly a decade at the point of this writing and it remains one of my favorite albums of this long and storied band. This is an excellent "return to the roots" album. It's an unabashed tribute to their past while still incorporating all the things that the band learned throughout their nearly 35 year history. This is how you do it, stand up and pay attention.
Written November 27th 2023
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