Paradise Lost | ‘Faith Divides Us - Death Unites Us’

First of all, before we even get to playing the record, the vinyl edition of Paradise Lost’s 12th studio album is a masterclass in desirability. It has a gatefold sleeve, a poster, and a bonus 7” with a cardboard sleeve featuring the background of the album cover art (rather than a basic record company paper sleeve).

It also has a CD of the full album to beat the downloaders, and really, there’s something here for pretty much every metal collector. Had it been in coloured vinyl, this would have been absolutely perfect. As it is, it’s physically spot on.

Music wise, it starts off well with ‘As Horizons End’- epic, mournful and powerful; very, very assured. As soon as Holmes starts to sing, it is undoubtedly Paradise Lost. Nobody could mistake that brand of dark gothic melancholy for something else.

However, in an odd way, there seems to be influences from other bands coming through as the album progresses, most notably Burton C Bell of Fear Factory in the growly vocals, and Metallica in the music - particularly in ‘I Remain.’

Actually, if Metallica put out a track like this, they’d be heroes, as it’s a great metal song, just not a great PL song, barring the chorus which is unmistakable theirs alone. Lyrically, it’s typically dark, bleak at times, melancholic and beautiful.

What gives the vinyl edition another massive plus point is the way the tracklisting is structured. Towards the end of the A side, the songs do suffer in quality, in that each song feels like it’s the one right before your favourite song, which doesn’t arrive.

This sense of stalemate is assuaged in a fantastic way when the record flips to side B and ‘Rise Of Denial’ opens it up with a cracking heavy doom song, suggesting that they took the vinyl edition into account when they compiled the running order.

Attention that may have wavered halfway through the album is now firmly right back where it should be, and the tempo is kept up right up until the end, especially in future live favourite ‘Universal Dream.’ And in fairness, this shows remarkable humility and foresight.

Songs that the band themselves recognize as being somewhat substandard compared to the rest are used as a build up to the brilliant second half of the record. When have you ever seen a band be so realistic and critical?

Coming back to the earlier Metallica theme for a bit, the bonus 7” features orchestral treatments of the title track and ‘Lost Regret,’ both of which work admirably and make the listener wonder if there’s possible mileage in an “S&M” type album. Imagine songs like ‘Mercy’ with the full cello treatment, or ‘The Last Time’ with a brace of slow violins.

It could potentially be amazing, as both songs on the 7” are so bombastic and powerful, with the orchestration adding a completely new dimension to the songs. It’s quite unlike Metallica’s effort, in which the orchestra played along with the band and didn’t quite gel right; with this, the orchestra are the full band – there’s just them and Holme’s vocals, and it sounds fascinating.

The majority of songs off this album are vintage Paradise Lost, and this isn’t altogether a compliment. These songs sound as if they could have been on any PL album of the past ten years, and compared to the groundbreaking “In Requiem”, there hasn’t been a similar step forward, rather a step sideways.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing mind you, if fact if they were to play two thirds of this album live, the audience would not be disappointed one bit. It’s just, had they have cranked out one or two classic tracks, the album would have easily beat the previous one.

If you liked “In Requiem”, and let’s face it, how could you not have, then you’ll dig this a lot, just not as much. It still has a lot of playability, but following such a great album was always going to be difficult, and one can’t help but think one or two tracks could have been held over from the previous album to make this one even better. It’s still a great album, just not as great as it should have been.

3.8 - Dónal McBrien ::: 13/01/10