PARADISE LOST

Thirteen albums into Paradise Lost's 20+ year career, namedropping is pointless. The only band they can and should be held up against for comparison and consideration is Paradise Lost. With a career dating back to 1988, and their official recording debut in 1990 (Lost Paradise), the band has been riding and rollercoaster of highs and lows that began in earnest with their fourth album, Icon, in 1993. It presented Paradise Lost as a band that had more to offer beyond their established doom-death metal sound, driving the point home in 1995 with Draconian Times, an album that is considered to be a goth metal benchmark to this very day. That they would follow their international breakthrough with a slide into the realms of electronica only two years later (One Second) boggled the collective mind of Paradise Lost’s devout fanbase, yet their new direction earned a following of its own. The band made a gradual return to the swamp that spawned them, however, beginning with 2002’s Symbol Of Life. Elements of their favoured doom-goth sound grew consistently darker and louder with each album that followed, and each time the curiosity as to how far Paradise Lost would take this comeback grew.