Paradise Lost - Gothic (1991)

My first experience with Halifax, England, UK Doom legends, Paradise Lost feels like a lifetime ago or at least a decade ago through a compilation titled, 'Peaceville Classic Cuts,' which had an assortment of great songs on it from bands such as, My Dying Bride, Anathema, Katatonia, Darkthrone, Opeth and At the Gates (among a few others) and it may or may not have served as an intro to some of these other bands too, which kind of makes you wonder why I sold it, especially since all of these bands I can list among my all-time favs these days. Well, anyway, it wasn't until about 2003 that I got my hands on a re-issue of the bands debut full-length, 'Lost Paradise,' which I thought was okay and it wasn't until much, much later that I happened to find this old original press of the bands sophomore release, 'Gothic,' which in case you didn't know is often considered a milestone within the death/doom genre.

It's likely that most people that hear this now twenty year old record for the first time might not consider it to be much of a release, but what you must understand is that in March of 1991 no one, absolutely no one was playing music in this style. In '91 pure death metal reigned supreme, but these weirdos somehow came up with the idea to blend both death metal with slow ultra heavy doom metal characteristics, a few crafty solos, random keyboard orchestration and brief female vocal enrichment into a style that would soon be dubbed death/doom... and then imitated by thousands.

'Gothic' is a strange album though as the song writing isn't the best, parts of it sound outright awkward and the production is awful, but in terms of melody, mood and overall progress from their debut, Paradise Lost succeeds greatly here. The riffs from Gregor Mackintosh and Aaron Aedy are catchy, but truly bleak and the solos are immensely foreboding and gorgeous throughout the entire affair as well the tempo tends to vary a bit more than you'd expect as some clear death metal influence shines through, especially on, 'Dead Emotion.' Nick Holmes' low grunts are fantastic and full of emotion from the get go and the occasional operatic female voice of Sarah Marrion is ethereal perfection. Stephen Edmondson's bass guitar is there, somewhere, kinda and Matthew Archer's drum work sounds suffocated and minuscule next to the powerful riffs and low grunts, but for all I know the re-issues of this release may have enhanced these setbacks. The keyboards, although brief are used wisely and only enhance the dark ghostly somber mood further.

However like I already said Gothic is a strange album, those thirty eight minutes blow right by and you wont get it on the first spin, especially if you have a good decade of listening to this style behind you like I did when I finally heard it. But, you know, once you give this album a number of spins it really starts to all come together and when you consider its age and influence you'll finally get why Gothic is a death/doom masterpiece.

The album has been re-issued twice in the past decade, most recently as a 2CD that comes with a DVD of an old live performance from '91, which really gets my curiosities going.