Today, PARADISE LOST have released ‘Ghosts’, the second single from their new album Obsidian, out on May 15th, via Nuclear Blast Records. The newly minted anthem is a guaranteed dancefloor-filler at any discerning goth nightclub and comes with an impressive lyric video.
Nick Holmes about ‘Ghosts’: “This song tips a cap to the goth rock music that was ubiquitous when we were teenagers. Even as young Death metal fans, a lot of that old 80’s music is still very much the soundtrack of our early lives. Lyrically it’s about being haunted by the past and a shallow belief in something you hope will destroy the demons.”
The sixteenth PARADISE LOST studio album, Obsidian eschews its immediate predecessors’ gruesome, myopic approach in favour of a richer and more dynamic deluge of black shades. From the deceptive elegance and dual atmospheres of opener ‘Darker Thoughts‘ through to the crushing, baroque doom of war-torn closer ‘Ravenghast‘, Obsidian reveals a band in masterful control of a broad array of vital ideas. Most noticeably, the record boasts several songs that draw heavily from the much-loved, Kohl-encrusted days of ‘80s gothic rock.
Formed in Halifax, West Yorkshire, in 1988, PARADISE LOST were unlikely candidates for metal glory when they slithered from the shadows and infiltrated the UK underground. But not content with spawning an entire subgenre with early death/doom masterpiece Gothic nor with conquering the metal mainstream with the balls-out power of 1995’s Draconian Times, they have subsequently traversed multiple genre boundaries with skill and grace, evolving through the pitch-black alt-rock mastery of ‘90s classics One Second and Host to the muscular but ornate grandeur of 2009’s Faith Divides Us – Death Unites Us and Tragic Idol (2012), with the nonchalant finesse of grand masters. The band’s last two albums – The Plague Within (2015) and Medusa (2017) – saw a much celebrated return to brutal, old school thinking, via two crushing monoliths to slow-motion death and spiritual defeat. Consistently hailed as one of metal’s most charismatic live bands, PARADISE LOST arrive in this new decade as veterans, legends and revered figureheads for several generations of gloomy metalheads. In keeping with their unerring refusal to deliver the expected, 2020 brings one of the band’s most diverse and devastating creations to date.
