Genre: Gothic/Doom/Death metal
Country: U.K.
Label: Peaceville
Year: 1991
Paradise Lost – Gothic times!
Gothic is the second album that Paradise Lost released in 1991, after Lost Paradise that was released in 1990. Well, a mysterious post on the band’s profile page on facebook some days ago has aroused many questions to the fans of the band. On the 6th of August, Paradise Lost made it all clear to us… The band is about to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Gothic while headlining Roadburn Festival on April 14th, 2016. They will perform the whole album, along with some songs from their new masterpiece The Plague Within. I think that that is something many many fans would love to watch live.
In this album someone can understand that Paradise Lost were working on finding their personal style as they did clearly in the next albums. P.L may be the perfect example to describe a band that is trying to find itself. Within the album one can listen to doom, heavy and death metal influences combined with classic and catchy Paradise Lost riffs. Songs like Gothic, Angel Tears, Shattered can show you how Paradise Lost would like their music to sound like in their next albums in my opinion. This is clear for me on Icon. But for now let’s just stay on Gothic times…
This album is brutal enough but you can see that it’s somehow a more smooth brutal album since it includes keyboards and female vocals. That’s something that was missing, not that much though, from the band’s first album Lost Paradise. Gothic also consists of orchestral parts. As I said, this album has doom and heavy parts but a bit faster, if I could say more alike to Paradise Lost style. Gothic is a concept album as the lyrics are based mostly on religion and suffering. Listening to Nick’s vocals, all I get is pain. Pain that wants to say something and yes! Nick manages to deliver that pain. Pure raw aggressive vocals only with a couple of clear parts found in this album.
The leads and the solos in this album are tasteful in every song. Some solos remind me of thrashy solos combined perfectly with the “suffering” concept of the album. The bass and the drumming collaborate perfectly. If you consider that Gothic is a doomdeath album, you can see that the drumming from Archer is very creative. In doomdeath style the drummer cannot rely on speed. He has to work on patterns. Archer seems to be inventive since you can listen to really nice drums in the whole album along with some speed parts in it.
The only bad thing someone could find in this album is the production but… Hell no! This is raw doomdeath metal. Not only that, but Gothic is the foetus of Gothic Metal as Paradise Lost delivered it in the next albums! In a few words, this album is a great contribution to Metal history. This is an album that every metalhead must listen to, needless to say every Paradise Lost fan. Let’s hope that they get to tour the entire Gothic album all around Europe and not just Roadburn Festival.
Track List
1. Gothic
2. Dead Emotion
3. Shattered
4. Rapture
5. Eternal
6. Falling Forever
7. Angel Tears
8. Silent
9. The Painless
10. Desolate
LINE UP
Nick Holmes – vocals
Matthew Archer – drums
Stephen Edmondson – bass
Aaron Aedy – guitars
Gregor Mackintosh – guitars
Guest musicians
The Raptured Symphony Orchestra – orchestral sections
Sarah Marrion – vocals
Production
Keith Appleton – engineering
Richard Moran – cover art, photography
Recorded at: Academy Music Studios, West Yorkshire. November 1990 – January 1991