There is the mainstream and there is our world. Sometimes, like star struck lovers, they cross, but in the main we stay in our pre-designated lanes. Moonspell and Paradise Lost are unknown and uncared for in the world that sits above the Club Academy (I get quizzical blank looks from trendy students at the Union bar when I reply to their curious questioning of who’s on tonight). Both acts have heritage and a respective thirty and thirty four year pedigree, yet they have scarcely made a dent on the public psyche. They are akin to hidden treasures, worshiped by the throng of metallers and goths gathered in this subterrain haunt but ignored by everyone else. 

The fact that thirty years into an illustrious career Moonspell are, in this country still the support act in a tiny club says much more about this island’s attitude to continental Metal than it does about the standing of this highly influential act. Moonspell are storytellers, wandering bards with just more tattoos and battle jackets than usual. They use an emotive mix of goth and power metals to conjure up both mythical and actual tales. The fact they are on a much smaller stage than they are usually used to doesn’t phase them, they are consummate showmen who have come here to put on a show. There are probably no more than 500 Moonspell devotees in the whole of the northwest, but it feels like every single one of them is here tonight. They are treated like a headline act with clasped hands held aloof and lyrics bellowed out with gusto and pure emotion. Set wise we zoom all over their prolonged timeline, with three tracks from last years “Hermitage” (number four in our album of the year countdown) and lightening raids on 2008’s “Night Eternal”, 2015’s “Extinct” and 1996’s “Irreligious”. However, the greatest reaction is reserved for a rare (first time on this tour) outing for ‘Wolfshade’ (A Werewolf Masquerade) from their debut record. Wolf horns are held high and you can hear the reverence in the voices that scream in unison “We are but children of the powers she had set free”. Epic, evocative and utterly wonderful, just don’t expect anyone outside of the inner circle in the venue to have heard of them.

Paradise Lost are likewise far more important than their standing in this country gives them credit for. If billing was dictated by influence, then they would be headlining four consecutive nights at the Etihad rather than a one off appearance in a beer soaked cellar. They are the forefathers of goth metal and every band that has mixed the Mission with Metallica owes them a hefty commission. The band long ago embraced their cult status and seem to have made an internal pact to continue stretching themselves and to never rest on their laurels. Every record (there has been sixteen) sees them push their template further, constantly stretching their boundaries of what constitutes their sound. After full album shows at both Bloodstock and Damnation Festivals, tonight we get the bizarre spectacle of a greatest hit set by a band that has never had a single hit. Tracks such as ‘Last Time’, ‘Faith Divides Us - Death Unites Us’, ‘Widow’ and ‘So much is Lost’ are treated by the ravenous crowd like they were platinum selling mega anthems. As I said Paradise Lost are true underground heroes and the fittingly basement level venue is filled to the brim with their adoring masses. This is not a crowd with a passing interest in their headline act (the “I once heard a track on the radio” brigade), to a person this is an audience that devotionally adore them. 

One of the remarkable things is that aside from a revolving door approach to drummers, they had exactly the same line up since their formation in 1988. Childhood friends Nick, Gregor, Aaron and Stephen have grown up in each other’s pockets and that bond manifests itself in the fact they are as tight a musical unit as you will ever witness. There is a sixth sense like telepathy going on in the way that their individual efforts blend together to create this harmonious but darkly foreboding sound, bleak but equally euphoric. Nick Holmes is an effortlessly irreverent frontman; he jokes about the songs debuting from the new album actually being nearly two years old (blame Covid) and he tries on a Manc accent to fit in with us locals. There is a wonderful down to earthiness about him and the whole band, they may well be one of the most important metal bands this country as ever produced, but when it comes down to it they are just five mates from Halifax (well four from Halifax and one from Helsinki) playing Metal for the sheer love of it.

The encore illustrates once again the magical musical fusion that is at the heart of Paradise Lost. ‘Beneath Broken Earth’ liberally purloins that riff from Black Sabbath and wraps it in atmospheric goth, whilst closing number ‘Ghosts’ is a heartfelt love letter to the Sisters of Mercy’s ‘First, Last and Always’. Paradise Lost have cleverly built a thirty plus year career from taking the best bits of Metal and Goth and marrying them together to create a dark, tempestuous whole. They were never hip and they were never in danger of headlining Download (let alone Glastonbury) but to every one in the Club academy tonight they are quite simply the greatest band that has ever walked this earth, and that alone matters.