14. Paradise Lost - 'Obsidian'

Like My Dying Bride earlier, Paradise Lost have managed to be incredibly influential without ever truly breaking into the mainstream psyche. Over thirty-two years their sound has morphed and evolved. The melancholic doom of their initial few records soon blended into the stadium goth of the incredible “Draconian Times”, which then shifted into an electro synthpop phase (loved on the continent, hated over here). 

We then got a shift into Goth Metal with 2007’s “In Requiem “and then a seven-year period where the band began to gradually drift in a more and more metallic direction. This culminated in 2015 with “The Plague Within”, a death-doom masterpiece and certainly their heaviest record. 2017’s “Medusa” continued that retreat into extreme Metal and that brings us smack up to date with record number sixteen, “Obsidian”. 

This time around they have decided to borrow from the various stages of their carrier and create a hybrid of an album that visits various styles and speeds during its forty-five-minute duration. The goth is back (as is traces of the electro) and there are several tracks that would not have sounded out of place on “First, Last and Always”. But interestingly they haven’t ditched the Metal. It is still there lurking menacingly in the background, unleashed as and when Nick lets loose with his best death growls. 

What is really interesting about “Obsidian” is that Paradise Lost finally seem to have figured out how to intertwine and interconnect their various musical components. It is not even that there are fast tracks, slow tracks, miserable tracks. It doesn’t divide out as neatly and compartmentalised as that. Instead you can see traces of all their historical styles in all of the tracks. And that is what makes this such a great album. 

If you have loved Paradise Lost at some point in their varied carrier, there is something here for you here. As for me, I’ve loved them in all their various guises (even the electro phase) and therefore “Obsidian” feels like a treasure trove of everything that I have ever thought wonderful about them.