Album number 15 and PL are up to their old tricks as Andy explains
Back in the early 1990s, MV bought a music magazine one lunchtime. The passage of time means that I can’t remember precisely which one – memory says it was Raw – but the point is that it had a four-track sampler on.
We can remember two of the bands on it: one was Space Age Playboys – the outfit founded by Kory Clarke after the demise of Warrior Soul – and one of the others was something heavier than we’d ever come across before.
It was as grey as the West Yorkshire landscape that spawned the band, vicious even, but it was brilliant. It was the first time these ears came into contact with Paradise Lost.
Over the years, liking Paradise Lost – rather like supporting The Wildhearts – has led to many head-scratching, even “what the….?” Moments, and yet the band have a real quality to always write music that grows on you and prove they were always right all along.
The dabble into electronica – which culminated in “Host” at the end of the 1990s – along the way spawned my favourite PL record, the absolutely wonderful “One Second” and the move back to heavier material, which really got into full swing with 2009s “Faith Divides Us….Death Unites Us” album has done likewise.
So – and this is why this review is written in a slightly more personal way than usual – MV will admit that when “Medusa” arrived in the inbox, our initial reaction was to say “well that’s no good.”
And then, well, because it’s a band you’ve loved for getting on for 30 years you give it another go, and another. It’s like football, you don’t give up on your team just because they lose, do you?
So a week or two later, you are on your third listen of “Fearless Sky”, the song that ushers in this eight tracker on a simply gargantuan riff, and suddenly it all makes sense. The harsh vocals of Nick Holmes allied to the lead guitar of Gregor Mackintosh, become almost perfect and the epic feel of the track takes you back to their early albums like “Gothic” and by the middle Holmes has found melody in the darkness as only he can.
“Gods Of Ancient” driven by new drummer Waltteri Väyrynen, and is if anything heavier and altogether colder, while “From The Gallows” is oppressive and has intentions a lot longer than its four minutes.
The landscape that Paradise Lost inhabit, is one that is necessarily bleak and nowhere is this better shown than on “The Longest Winter”.
Naming the album after a Greek Goddess that has snakes for hair and that turns anyone who looks at her to stone is probably indicative of the mood here. This is intentionally a difficult record. Ironically, the title track is perhaps one of the least heavy cuts on the record, which is countered by “No Passage For The Dead” which has almost murderous intent.
Repeated listens reveal more light and shade than is immediately obvious. “Blood And Chaos” has a kind of thrash metal groove, and is perhaps the most immediate song on offer. There is nothing on “Medusa” that offers a hook filled affair like “Say Just Words” or “The Last Time” but this is as close as it gets. and if anything was going to induce a moshpit at a Paradise Lost gig then this might be the one, while the doom feel is amped up again for the closing “Until The Grave”.
“Medusa” is in many ways, Paradise Lost doing exactly what they’ve always done – exactly what they want. There is no one better at it either. And that passes for business as usual. Like a knockout punch in a heavyweight fight, the ones that floor you are the ones you don’t see coming. Paradise Lost just landed one such blow.
Rating 8.5/10
