The punishingly bleak death metal on Paradise Lost’s 1990 debut Lost Paradise makes it the odd-one-out in a discography more renowned for gothic melody. But the five teenagers had only been together about a year before being faced with the challenge of recording their first record and, despite not having found their voice yet, they make a pretty decent fist of it. A lack of songcraft means it all kind of mushes together but they already have their doleful mix of riff and lead guitar down, there’s the occasional decent hook (“where is your God now?”), and the whole thing has a entrancingly subterranean atmosphere. And Lost Paradise has proven pretty influential in its own right as one of the earliest albums to slow death metal down to a miserable crawl. The Yorkshiremen would do much better with subsequent releases but fans of meat and potatoes death/doom could do a lot worse than check this out.
HMO Rating: 3 Out Of 5
[Paradise Lost – Rotting Misery]
Aw man I remember CD’s all going this shape for a while. I liked this at the time, haven’t listened to it in a very long time.
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Yeah these cases really bug me. If they crack it’s a pain getting a replacement. And the double ones… aaargh
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(Looks down from his ivory tower and pulls mocking faces)
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Hey! It’s only matter of time before CDs come back you know! And then you’ll be well jell.
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I’ll denounce them as ‘unclean’ and ‘foreign’ in our new Brexit reality and everyone will have to burn them and listen to music on some entirely new, inferior British music format named after Churchill*.
(*prime minister, not the dog from the advert).
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Honestly… you Welsh are all the same! Maybe we can press music into leeks? But it can only be Tom Jones and/or Shakey.
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In other Doom n Gloom news have u heard the news Scott that Voi Vod won a Juno ( Canada’s version of the Grammy) last night?
Good on em getting recognized by the suits after 35 years!
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No didn’t know that. Good on ’em.
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They narrowly beat out Jethro Tull.
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Where is your God now?
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I sent him down to the shops. Do you need him for something?
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Yes. Have him buy me a vinyl copy of Highway to Hell and take a selfie flashing the devil horns.
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Those debuts that aren’t quite on par with the rest of the catalogue, like you said, are still worth a look. Radiohead jumps to mind for me
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Good example. Motorhead and Priest spring to mind too. Not all great bands were fully formed from the beginning.
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Man that riff combined with the bell at the start was somehow Sabbath. \m/ \m/ Based on that track alone, and not really having heard much else PL except on your site, I’d say these are promising beginnings!
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It’s promising start definitely. Important, influential too. Still hear bands that want to sound like this. But PL did much better stuff later.
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Oooft. They make a bit of a racket, eh? And that singer lad sounds like he’s a bit frustrated at something.
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He’s from Yorkshire. I think that’s it.
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Something about pudding?
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Or Terriers?
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That’ll be it.
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