Never For the Damned 
Ash & Debris 
The Enemy 
Praise Lamented Shade 
In Requiem 
Unreachable 
Prelude to Descent 
Fallen Children 
Beneath Black Skies 
Sedative God 
Your Own Reality 


Ltd. album edition bonus tracks:
Missing (Everything But The Girl cover version) 
Silent In Heart 

 

Nick Holmes - Vocals

Greg Mackintosh - Lead Guitar

Aaron Aedy - Rhythm and Acoustic Guitar

Steve Edmondson - Bass

Jeff Singer - Drums


PARADISE LOST: "In Requiem"     paradise lost         Century Media

Jeff dedicates this album to the memory of his brother Danny Singer

Produced by Rhys Fulber, mixed by Mike Fraser. 

Recorded at Chapel Studios and Strait Sound.

2 reviews : by Matthew Haumschild and dalia di giacomo


"
Paradise Lost (X)
Paradise Lost live in Wolverhampton 2004
Paradise Lost Live in Thessaloniki 2004
I Despair (PL fanzine of gryphonmetal.ch)
Symbol of Life
interviews with Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost live at Astoria 2003
Paradise Lost Live in Zürich 2003
Paradise Lost live Thessaloniki 2003
Paradise Lost - reviews written by  the fans

review by Matthew "Newbreed99" Haumschild___ 


The perfect example on how different a band can sound 

with a different drummer. 

 

         Admittedly, I am a bit nervous about reading this because of the amount of Paradise Lost fans that come to the site I hope to give an honest review of this album from an occasional Paradise Lost listener. I would also like to point out that the last album I had listened to from this band was, “Symbol Of Life” so this is my first time hearing Paradise Lost’s new drummer. And because SOL (no pun intended) was the last album I had heard, I can only make comparisons to that album.

 

            I will be brutally honest; I hated the first track, Never For The Damned. It’s a good song, but it shouldn’t have been placed as the opening track. Maybe on a single or an EP but not this! I had to listen to the CD 5 times before I could get into the album. This CD was in danger of being shelved! In other words, put on my CD shelf to gather dust, until I skipped the first track altogether and just started listening to Ash & Debris.

 

            As illogical as it sounds, when I started skipping the first track, the CD became more listenable. It flowed a lot better and that still matters to me when I listen to a CD. Ash & Debris has a much stronger opening sequence and it comes out of the gate rocking after the keyboard intro. So, before passing your own judgment of this CD, please, skip the first track and start out by listening to this one first. This may be high praise, but I would consider this song to be one of the best PL songs I’ve ever heard. The lyrics are sung with such force that when I started to sing along I saw why he was singing that way. The arrangements are just great!

 

            Already, I was starting to hear the difference between SOL and In Requiem. The largest difference for me is the drumming. The drumming style is very different from their previous drummer Lee Morris. It’s faster and the drum tones are higher pitched, especially the hi-hats. The fills are also completely different than Morris, this makes PL almost sound like a new band despite the same line up. I would consider this the perfect example on how different a band can sound with a different drummer.

 

            The Enemy is what I call an “Autumn song.” I call it that, because I could only picture this song playing in Autumn. That’s just what I get from it, I can’t quite explain it. This is a gothic song but it has some modern rock influence to it. Of all the songs on here, this track sounds like it could have been on SOL. It’s got hook like lyrics that make a person want to sing along. The drumming and guitar playing is at a mid to fast pace. It got me headbanging throughout the song.

 

            Another song I could see on SOL or on, dare I say it, Draconian Times, is Unreachable. This song is a mid to slow paced song that is gothic again but still has some modern rock influence on. I only say some because there isn’t a band today that could have made this song except Paradise Lost. The song made me feel melancholy, which is what a good gothic band is supposed to do. The lyrics are sung with meaning and the rest of band is doing what they do best. Greg Mackintosh also has a very respectable guitar solo in it.

 

            Some of the things I didn’t like about this CD is that some of the songs started sounding the same after awhile. The music would be different but the lyrics would sound the same. I swear, I heard the word, “children” in at least two songs along with the word “enemy”. The songs that sounded the same didn’t sound bad, but it was hard to report on some individual songs if they sound the same, no?

 

            Knowing the album was recorded digitally, as is most things are now a days, it actually didn’t sound bad at all. I actually have very little to complain about. The mix was good, the production was good, the drums could have had a little more depth but it was acceptable. About the only thing I had a problem with was the song order as I explained in my second paragraph.  

 

            Am I glad I bought the CD? Yes. Would I recommend it to new listeners? Yes. It’s gothic in some spots, but gothic in a different way than Icon was gothic. I’m not sure how older PL fans will take this CD, but I liked it.

rating: 8/10

 

Matthew Haumschild   29.10.2007

 


review  by dalia "gryphon_spirit" di giacomo ___             


"Memories of the years 

that started the pain"

 

"The only thing wrong with immortality is that it tends to go on forever" (Herb Caen). 

"In Requiem" (11th  full length) sounds to me as the soundtrack of a life that goes on and on, almost condemned to existence, while everything is perishing around, while time and habits change, while people die and new generations grow up. Nothing remains at it was , you remember but cannot stop time from flowing away. If the previous "Paradise Lost" was an album marked by transparent aerial beauty, full of delicate chromatic rays nonetheless ambassadors of the return to metal, "In Requiem" is the accomplished work but a work  full of anguish, sorrow, and imperishable stench of death and pain that you are sentenced to breath. "In Requiem" marks the total return to those heavy tones so much awaited from the "old" fans of the Gothic/ Shades of God/Icon eras. But no problem, the new acquired Goth Rock fans find enough stuff to please their taste. The result is the most obvious one, yet the most mysterious, so discussed yet never well explained: Gothic Metal. The Gothic Metal, founded, or co-founded, by Paradise Lost, exist and goes on although its boundaries are not well defined. "In Requiem" is essence of Gothic metal. Pity that a couple of songs just bitter the party. All in all,  the metal sonorities are too bound to the band's old schemas, as if PL would express the will to play safe, but  tracks like the The Enemy, Prelude to Descent (with a classic metal discharge in which i personally don't find any  significance in the context yet is one of the most resolute  and heavy moments of this cd ) and Fallen Children are , in my opinion, really arrogant . By the way, the first notes of the verse of Fallen Children makes remind me of the old Sentenced of Fragile ("Crimson") . 


Better songs, although bridges launched between Gothic /Icon and "Paradise Lost", are the monumental Requiem, the opener Never for the Damned and the mournful, cold and highly melodic outro Your own Reality. Your own Reality is the track that, more then others, embosses in music a melancholic  shroud of disappointment and discontent.

But, in this album, there are also sides which are ace as if the Romanticism of Novalis and Byron  could meet the canons of today 's world. Praise Lamented Shade and Beneath Black Skies are awesome works of absolute Gothicism.  Beneath Black Skies delivers impressive vocals and a brilliant guitar dynamism . Subjugating is the insidious (and a bit catchy) beauty of Unreachable (allow me this cheap trick with the words), Ash & Debris and Sedative God. The latter giving also a good overview of the band's career. 

Those who know the two bonus tracks of the limited album edition will maybe agree with me by saying that Silent in Heart is a nice song with a certain "verve" and very pounding guitars, a welcome object of uptempo sorrow that kills the grief  nonetheless. Missing (Everything But The Girl cover) is literally transformed into a disturbing ghost.


Some passages of the lyrics have enchanted me since long: take these groups as example:

...memories of the years that started the pain...

....memories fallen years that started the hate.  (Unreachable)

or 

...my ever needing soul, never wanted blood...(Ash & Debris)


...can you question why?
i wonder how eternally i'm blind... (Sedative God)

These groups of words, beyond their possible meanings, act like blades in the contest of their songs.



Definately other plus points are the absence of dance beats, the vocals who are solid and mature, the well known deep ability, force and harmony of the rhythmic session, the wonderful "drops" of piano, the very care in all details especially in the musical background carpet, a dark impressive and totally proper artwork (again by Seth Siro Anton) and the Victorian retro atmosphere of the photos supplied with the record. The limited digipak with alternative coverart and black velvet box is 100% elegance and good taste, ideal brother of the Special Edition Collectors' Box of "Draconian Times". "In Requiem" is dramatic but not bombastic, sometimes catchy but not commercial, sometimes arrogant but not too presumptuous. Sometimes deja vu, sometimes terribly attractive. Still it's not the metal i would hear now from PL, but i actually cannot free myself from Ashes & Debris, from Sedative God, from Unreachable. Because these tracks are so sick, because these tracks are so magic. Because these tracks makes me so fatally nostalgic.


dalia di giacomo - 29.10.2007

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