Obsidian

Over 32 years, doom/goth metal pioneers Paradise Lost have consistently caused confusion among fans due to an insatiable penchant for reinvention, experimentation, and musical growth. They have regularly engaged pop styles (including danceable synth pop) antithetical to metals unholy rule book. The band offered an uncharacteristic olive branch to punters with 2015s The Plague Within and 2017s Medusa. Those albums marked a symbolic return to heavier roots, but Paradise Losts sophisticated songwriting and production still colored outside the lines. Obsidian shifts gears again. While retaining many aspects of their visceral doom approach, it reflects the groups obsession with gothic rock and post-punk. Co-produced by the band and Jaime Gomez Arellano, Obsidian offers a swirling mass of dark, moody atmospheres, crunchy, blasting, distorted guitars, muddy drums, dramatic structures, gorgeous labyrinthian melodies, and plodding tempos. Sisters of Mercy and Fields of the Nephilim are the patron saints of inspiration here, though Paradise Lost never allow them to subsume their own sound. The fingerpicked acoustic guitars and halting, crystalline vocals that introduce opener Darker Thoughts should have listeners checking the sleeve to make sure this is Paradise Lost. Further disorienting are violins that waft in from the margins before getting multi-tracked as they introduce blazing guitars and thudding kick drums. The slow, processional tempo creates an ever-intensifying whirl of sound as frontman Nick Holmes reveals astonishing control over Jekyll (clean) and Hyde (dirty) vocals while songwriter/lead guitarist Greg Mackintosh rips through a solo. The refracted doom vamps in Fall from Grace offer a whirlpool of heaviness as Mackintosh plays counterpoint single-string leads in call-and-response. Holmes growls from the depths before a ringing melodic refrain channels an even more desolate characters inspiration, Depeche Mode vocalist Dave Gahan. Though Ghosts commences with Waltteri Vayrynens rumbling kick drum, Steve Edmondsons absolutely filthy low-tuned bass line guides the track. One could be forgiven (at least initially) for thinking this is a Sisters of Mercy outtake. That said, the monstrously dramatic interplay between that bass line and the bands riffing offers an overdriven, orgiastic goth groove. Forsaken is a near-textbook case for gothic metal. Mackintoshs first guitar break sets up a massively satisfying chug while Holmes channels Carl McCoy and Ian Curtis in his delivery and a sampled classical chorus hovers in the backdrop. Serenity is anything but, a massive blur of slamming drums, open, ringing guitars, and droning bass; its elegiac intensity recalls Fields of the Nephilims Paradise Regained. Hope Dies Young is set to a post-punk trudge before turning left toward the bands own anthemic, muscular early-90s sound. The startling Ravenghast offers some of Mackintoshs heaviest-ever riffing, as Holmes shreds his vocal cords trying to match the intensity. Three decades on from their debut album, Paradise Lost sound as inspired and restless as ever. After all of the stylistic evolution, Obsidian seamlessly and dynamically entwines doom, gothic metal, and post-punk in brilliant songwriting and arrangements that showcase the band still standing, in pure angry, desolate form. ~ Thom Jurek