Three decades in, their ability to sound both crushingly heavy and irresistibly melodic remains unmatched, and the fact they’re still adding to their legacy with this much conviction is nothing short of remarkable.
To be pioneers in any style of music is something to be respected. To do it twice, evolving into something different, is something else altogether, it’s what sets the special bands apart. You could forgive Paradise Lost for coasting on reputation alone, phoning it in and cashing in on nostalgia. But that isn’t the case here. Latter-day Paradise Lost have taken everything they’ve learned—the death-doom foundations, the gothic grandeur, the sleaze, the sorrow—and woven it together into a sound that is so utterly theirs that no one else even comes close.
This album plays like a guided tour through their history, a living anthology that doesn’t just revisit old sounds but merges them into something unified and vital. Over the last decade, the band have perfected this balance: the oppressive weight of their earliest death-doom—the cavernous growls, the grinding riffs, the suffocating dread—fused with the anthemic, gothic rock swagger that made them cult icons in the ’90s. The result is an album that hits like a leaden hammer but glistens with hooks, drenched in both despair and allure.
The atmosphere is suffocating throughout. One moment you’re swallowed by an avalanche of slow, bone-crushing rhythms, each chord ringing like a tolling bell, the next you’re pulled up by a riff so sleazy and infectious it could fill arenas. There’s no contradiction here—both sides feed into each other. The gothic dramatics give the doom its sheen, and the death-doom backbone gives the choruses their bite. Paradise Lost have found a way to sound more like themselves than ever, and it’s glorious in the bleakest possible sense.
The standout performance has to go to Nick Holmes. He’s always been versatile, but here he sounds like he’s having the time of his life dragging his voice through the pits. His guttural growls are filthy in the best possible way, a reminder of the death-doom heritage. Then he switches into that baritone croon, evoking Peter Steele’s gravitas, before twisting again into a snarl that out Hetfields, Big Papa Het himself. When those riffs get loose and dirty his voice marches, It’s a performance full of character, menace, and style, and untimely is just so cool, the kind of delivery that ties the whole record together.
The rest of the band are no less vital. Greg Mackintosh’s guitar work is as always monolithic yet melodic, pulling shards of light through walls of distortion, proving why he has the reputation he does. Steve Edmondson and Waltteri Väyrynen lay down a rhythm section that’s both thunderous and precise, ensuring the heaviness always lands with weight. The production is clear without sanding down the edges, rich enough to let every layer breathe but still drenched in oppressive atmosphere and oh so fucking loud.
Now, does this record reach the absolute heights of their classics? Probably not. There are passages that drag, sections that could have been trimmed back for more impact. At times, you get the sense a little cutting of filler would have sharpened the blade even further. But honestly, that can be forgiven, because when this album is at its best, it’s Paradise Lost at their best—heavy, miserable, seductive, and utterly compelling.
As a whole, it stands tall. Maybe it won’t be the one fans point to as their masterpiece thirty years from now, but it is a great record, and a testament to a band still refusing to stagnate. Paradise Lost don’t need to prove anything at this stage, yet here they are, delivering doom and gloom with as much conviction as ever, a sound that’s undeniably theirs, still crushing, still soaring, still essential.