In a new interview with Sakis Fragos of Rock Hard Greece, vocalist Nick Holmes of British gothic metal pioneers PARADISE LOST spoke about the band’s 17th album, “Ascension”, which came out on September 19 via Nuclear Blast Records. PARADISE LOST’s first album in five years, following 2020’s critically acclaimed “Obsidian”, was produced by guitarist Gregor Mackintosh and mixed/mastered by Lawrence Mackrory. Regarding PARADISE LOST’s songwriting approach on “Ascension”, Nick said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “I think when we re-recorded the ‘Icon’ album [to celebrate its 30th anniversary], actually just physically singing it and the guys physically playing it, it sort of brought us back to the time when we wrote that album and when we were young guys and how we used to write songs. And I think it was quite inspiring, to a degree, and it made us change our approach to the songwriting with this. Not that we wanted to kind of just copy anything from that album, but the approach that we had, it slightly changed and it kind of helped to shape many of the songs on this album. So, I think that, more than anything, not that it’s like the ‘Icon’ album, but — we’ve obviously done a lot since then and learned a lot since then. But I do think that kind of put us on to a pathway where we thought, ‘Oh, hang on a minute. Let’s maybe some songs approach a similar vibe to those days.’ But there’s a song on there that it could be off the ‘Shades Of God’ album as well. That’s another album which we always really liked that kind of went under the radar a little bit.”

He continued: “Yeah, [after] 17 albums or something, there’s a lot of stuff. I guess everything you do is like a chapter and it leads to the next one. But when we write albums, we don’t sit down and think, ‘Okay, what album are we gonna try and sound like?’ Or, ‘Which album was most successful?’ We don’t think like that. We like to keep moving forwards. And ultimately we are our own worst and heaviest critics. The band’s biggest critics are ourselves. No one criticizes like we do. So, we are the first hurdle, and if it gets past us, then there is a chance or maybe a possibility that the general public will like it. But you never know.”

Asked if PARADISE LOST consciously avoids any trends in heavy metal while writing new music or if the band kind of absorbs and reinterprets them, Nick said: “We just don’t care. I think if you try and jump on any trend, it’s, like the kiss of death. I think it’s important to keep your ear to the ground and see what people like, and then if all of a sudden you become totally unfashionable and you don’t understand why, you need to know what people are listening to. You need to know what the market is, the sales markets, what people are buying. I think that’s important to know. But at the same time, when we write music, we don’t really care what anyone else is doing. There has been, obviously, times in our career where we thought, ‘Oh, this band, what are they doing? What are they doing?’ But we there’s just no point. I mean, we’ve been going for so long, and we’re known for a certain way of writing, and that’s what we do now.

“When you start a band, most interviews that you do usually mention other bands all the time, ’cause they say, ‘Oh, you sound like this band. You sound like that band,’ but I haven’t actually heard one person mention another band in our interviews referring to the [new] album, apart from our own music, which is great,” he said. “So it just means we are in our own kind of little ecosystem.”

This past August, Gregor told Jerry Kurunen of Rauta about “Ascension”: “Something that really changed the approach to this record was… It was 30 years since our ‘Icon’ album a year or two ago, and we had to do a re-recording. But having to do that, re-learn those songs in such depth and re-record it put me in the headspace of ’92, ’93, ‘Shades Of God’, ‘Icon’ era, and that kind of influenced the songwriting for this record a little bit. So probably over half the album is very much in that vein.”

After Kurunen noted that PARADISE LOST has come “full circle” by returning to the band’s “death/doom” roots on some of its recent albums, Mackintosh said: “Well, when you say full circle, the first time that was mentioned to me was when we did ‘The Plague Within’ [2015] album, which is — I don’t know what year; it was 2014 or something — and I’d say that’s true. That’s pretty true. But since then we have been trying to maneuver around it, all our influences from all the past in different ways. Like ‘Medusa’ [2017] was far more of kind of sludgy record, and then the last one before this one, ‘Obsidian’ [2020], kind of has more gothy influences again, and this one, because of the ‘Icon’ re-recording, like I said, is kind of traveling somewhere between the ‘Shades Of God’, ‘Icon’ era-ish, but with a twist of now.”

Asked what it felt for him and his PARADISE LOST bandmates to be inspired by their own music while making “Ascension”, Gregor said: “It wasn’t inspired by our own music. It was kind of — I said this before — it is kind of puts you in the headspace of where you were at that time, what your influences were at that time, how you felt. And at that time, around ‘Shades Of God’ and ‘Icon’, we were very much into the… Even the name ‘Paradise Lost’. We even went back to that, It’s from the book. What does the book mean? What’s it about? What are the themes? This religious imagery, over-the-top religious imagery, even though we’re all atheists. So we kind of went down that path. And with the music, it was just a case of… I never used to play the same thing as any of the other… It was, like, we were all playing our different bits and there wasn’t too much riffage. It was there, but I was more of this harmony guy all the time. So we delved into that on this record. So it was more like the headspace. It wasn’t really being influenced by our own stuff. It was just, like, ‘Huh, this is interesting.’ ‘Cause over the years, incrementally, your style of playing changes, your style of songwriting changes, and you forget certain things. And then just revisiting it makes you think, ‘Ah, okay.’ … I mean, you try not to repeat yourself, obviously, but it gives you a warm feeling… So if you’re getting that, it must be a good thing.”

Mackintosh added: “I had half this album written three years ago. I had six or seven songs written, and I scrapped the whole lot because I wasn’t happy with it. And then I just gave up for a year. And then we did the ‘Icon’ [re-recording] thing, and I was, like, ‘Ah, okay. This is what it should be about. This is how it should go.’ And so I’ve never used anything from those six or seven songs. If you’re not feeling it, you’re not feeling it. And we’re in a lucky position that we haven’t got a label saying, ‘You’ve got to release this.’ We do it in our own time. So if you’re gonna live with something, it’s better that you’re comfortable with it.”

“Ascension”‘s album cover fittingly features the painting “The Court Of Death” (1870-1902) by renowned British artist George Frederic Watts, which hangs in the Tate Gallery in London. The painting depicts Death as an enthroned angel flanked by allegorical figures of Silence and Mystery guarding sunrise and the star of hope, while a warrior surrenders his sword and a duke his coronet, showing that worldly status offers no protection. The painting’s bleak, prophetic vision embodies “Ascension”‘s dark, tormented soundscapes as mournful verses collide with dire, foreboding riffs.

PARADISE LOST performed alongside KING DIAMOND and at festivals in Europe this summer before embarking on the first part its “Ascension Of Europe” tour this fall.

Photo credit: Ville Juurikkala