Paradise Lost - "Ascension", 2025

Paradise Lost used to be one of my top-5 favorite bands in the mid-90s; I followed the band through its constant evolution, from the seminal doom/death beginnings to the gothic metal perfection of the "Icon" and "Draconian Times" era, but I ended up loving even its more electronic phase, from "One Second" through "Symbol of Life." Mackintosh & Holmes always wrote great songs, regardless of the changes in the band's direction; the duo's talent for catchy melodies and rainy, melancholic atmospheres remained untainted over the years, and a fil rouge connected all the records within the band's discography up to that point, despite the stylistic changes between each other. The exciting thing about Paradise Lost was that you never knew exactly how a new record by the band would sound; you were always left surprised, sometimes even shocked, but a few spins were enough to realize that, be it a gothic metal record or an electro-darkwave one, the signature melodies of the band were still there and the songwriting bar was always set very high. In the 90s and early 00s, Paradise Lost was a forward-thinking band that wasn't afraid of experimenting but never entirely left behind its signature sound, even if it was filtered through different lenses on each record.

The 2005 self-titled album, though, was the beginning of a backtracking trend for the band, which brought back its metal sound after a number of softer records and progressively reintroduced more and more heavier elements from its past. I still loved "Paradise Lost" and, to some extent, 2007's "In Requiem," although by that one, the band was already trying a bit too hard to sound all-out gothic metal again. The band also started to introduce lower tunings on some of the songs, largely leaving behind the more rockish, easy-listening aspects of its sound, and when "Faith Divides Us—Death Unites Us" was released, it was clear that Paradise Lost was on a backwards journey, trying to recapture the sound of old but often ending up sounding like another band, or as a more trivial copycat of it. 2015's "The Plague Within," which many hailed as a modern classic, largely thanks to the unexpected reappearance of some growling vocals by Holmes, was actually a less than mediocre effort, trying to blend together all possible gothic/doom clichés and attempting some more extreme detours, resulting in embarrassing numbers such as "Flesh from Bone" or "Cry Out." This patchwork of styles continued rather unsuccessfully on the two albums that followed, but the "Icon 30" remake, while forgettable and uncalled-for, at least gave me a glimmer of hope that the band would use it as a template to finally come up with a new record worthy of its former glory. Here comes "Ascension," an album that received overwhelmingly positive reviews and comments from fans. I decided to give it a chance, as I always do with the band's output, but unfortunately it was another sore disappointment.

I'm not sure why both the band and some of its fans asserted that the record was inspired by "Shades of God"; that 1992 masterpiece featured a strong Black Sabbath vibe and progressive song structures that are nowhere to be found on "Ascension," which has nothing to do with it stylistically. Like all the albums the band released since "Faith Divides Us—Death Unites Us," and particularly since "The Plague Within," it doesn't sound like old Paradise Lost at all, if not for some of Greg Mackintosh's leads that still manage to glue things together. The problem that plagued Paradise Lost in the past 16 years has stayed the same: while backtracking in search of its own past, the band actually never really found it, and it came up with another variation of its style instead. I could have been fine with a rehash of the "Gothic" or "Icon" styles if the band was good enough to pull it off; the truth is that all the albums we got from the band since 2009 haven't got much to do with those two records or any of the first five. Holmes's growls are more a whisper than a roar; Mackintosh's guitars are downtuned most of the time and have a different tone; the production is always rather bombastic, with processed drums often overpowering everything else; the songs lack any lastability; even the lyrics took a dive for the worse, and "Ascension" isn't an exception. It's an absolute paradox, but both the first Vallenfyre record and the recent Host one sounded closer to the original Paradise Lost iterations than the actual Paradise Lost records we got since 2009. "A Fragile King" was a very inspired record, and it would have been plausible as a throwback to the "Lost Paradise" and "Gothic" times (if not for some faster riffs), while "IX" sounded like a successful stylistic bridge between "Host" and "Believe in Nothing." How does "Ascension" sound, then? Well, not at all like the Paradise Lost I fell in love with in the early 90s, that's for sure. 

The opener "Serpent on the Cross" sounds as if somebody asked Suno to write a gothic/doom metal song featuring some melodeath influences; it's more akin to a mix of Insomnium and Harakiri for the Sky than Paradise Lost, and having Holmes exclusively growling for the entire song only makes things worse. If you're about to think, "Hey, but he was growling on entire songs back in the 'Gothic' days too," of course he was, but this new album has got absolutely nothing to do with either "Gothic" or "Shades of God," and his growls these days lack power anyway. It almost sounds like an entirely new band, the same that fully manifested with "The Plague Within"; we could accept it as another evolution in the band's long line of stylistic shifts, but it feels more like a hodgepodge of discarded ideas from the band's old songbook and more modern influences borrowed from younger bands. I can't see much of a connection between a song like "Serpent on the Cross" and the band's classic repertoire; the only element that resembles its earlier work is the nice Mackintosh solo halfway through. The same feeling of A.I.-generated material goes on for a lot of the running time; just take "Salvation," for instance: every possible gothic/doom cliché is there, including sounds of cackling crows and bells in the beginning of the song. Are you guys serious? It all ties perfectly with the atrocious videos created to promote some of the album's singles. "Tyrants Serenade" fares a bit better, with some inspired leads by Mackintosh and a majority of clean vocals that make the song quite easy-listening, while very predictable; I could have done without those useless growls overdubbed on the chorus, but that's the only song from the album that I wouldn't mind hearing live if I were to see the band on tour.

It's on songs like that, when the band sounds a tad more in line with its classic material, that one can spot some glimmers of the glory that was; "Sirens" starts off as something off "Icon"—including the rowdy vocals by Holmes—before losing steam midway through, similarly to "Silence like the Grave," another song that could have done without the growls and without some generic-sounding transitional riffs. More melodic offerings such as "Lay a Wreath upon the World," "Savage Days," or "The Precipice" revel in the safe doom & gloom formula the band adopted on many of its 2015 to 2020 records, while "Diluvium" or "Deceivers" are forgettable fillers that in the heyday of the band would have qualified as B-side material at best. Strangely enough, one of the two bonus tracks, "A Life Unknown," is actually better than many of the album's cuts, resembling something out of "In Requiem," and finally offering a memorable refrain and familiar Paradise Lost melodies. Nothing groundbreaking, but a good song nonetheless.

There's an alarming lack of catchiness on "Ascension"; the band seems to try hard to sound as metal and doomy as possible, but save for some of Mackintosh's lead guitar work, the album comes off as extremely generic when not outright boring. It's pretty much the opposite of what the band used to be like in its best years, when writing immediately captivating, rocking tracks was paramount, and Holmes was focusing on vocal lines that were either anthemic or instant earworms. "Ascension" is the kind of record that you put on in the background, and when it's over, you realize you barely remember any of it. Take an album like "Gothic": in its simplicity, you could whistle the melodies to all the songs, even if the vocals were growling the whole time. The band seems to have progressively lost that ability to write stuff that can stand the test of time, and aside from a couple of songs each, all of its 2009 to 2025 records have been largely forgettable and mostly seemed like an excuse to embark on a new tour.

Paradise Lost came up with a formula that seems to please most of its current fanbase, and while I think the band is living on borrowed time at this point, I seem to be part of a minority. It won't change my opinion, though, and as somebody who's been following the band for a very long time and loved it to death, I don't feel any pleasure in writing such a review. I'm longing to have one of my favorite bands back, but it seems like I keep on getting its Wish version instead, and it's a disheartening feeling.

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