PARADISE LOST - Gothic

Probably many of you will see the following lines as blasphemy, but I cannot bear not telling you what’s in my heart. As a friend in need is a friend indeed, I hope you’ll find the patience to hear me out to the end or at least pretend that you do.

I have always found Gothic as an album of deep biblical significance. Like Jesus, who descended to hell and spent 3 days there and resisted all temptation, and then came back up and invented a new religion, so did Paradise Lost. I am still not quite sure whether hell was their debut album or the immediately subsequent period, but what is certain that in the year 1991, with or rather without their will, the 5 Britons resurfaced brand new, reinvented, purified or as you’d like to call them. The new religion was a new musical sub-genre, deriving from the early decade’s death metal and christened ad-hoc, yes, you guessed correctly, gothic metal.

Under closer and colder scrutiny, the band’s second outing is far from being a technical masterpiece, but their new expression has left an indelible mark on metal’s convoluted map. The relentless riffs of Lost Paradise took a slower, oppressive and solemn guise on Gothic, the voice became less abrupt and more sombre, while keeping remains of the fury and frustration from the debut. The new big thing was introducing female voices and the much more important role played by the keyboards. The final result was an imposing music with deep tragic echoes.

The presence of a crucified Christ on the album cover (whole on the last and only a detail on the first cover) and the texts including clear references would become a defining feature of the new sub-genre, being later assimilated by a multitude of disciples, on albums with various degrees of inspiration.

I end here with the hope that I have managed to bring you the most complete possible X-ray of this crucial moment of our common history.

P.S. I would like to thank my editor colleagues for their kindness in keeping the cooler Paradise Lost albums for themselves, while in exchange giving me the opportunity to become a martyr, a hero, a Sisyphus, an anti-hero and implicitly the editor with the most success with women.

Sake Nota: 8