Paradise Lost have been going for what seems like forever now. Tey first came to my attention in the late 90s on account of their cover of the Sisters of Mercy’s ‘Walk Away.’ A diehard Sisters fan and hooked on the gripping scale of Milton’s poetic language, I was dismissive, and didn’t trouble myself with further exploration at the time.
They seemed to emerge at a time when ‘goth’ was becoming popular, but in myriad, and invariably diluted forms, none of which bore much resemblance to the post-punk sound of the first wave of bands who subsequently became labelled as goth’. And apart from a few notable exceptions (Suspiria and Rosetta Stone being bands of choice), the scene was pretty turgid. The commercial metal sound Paradise Loat were pedalling in the mid-90s was therefore not only uninspiring, but reeked of cheese.
But I’ve heard and seen much worse in the intervening years, and can now appreciate – if not enjoy as a listener – the work they’ve done across a range of genres. A career-spanning live album with a full orchestra certainly affords a just opportunity to take critical stock, and ‘Symphony for the Lost’ isn’t without some impressive elements.
Orchestrated by conductor Levon Manukyan, who already has given the classical treatment to works by Marilyn Manson, Alice Cooper, Nirvana, Judas Priest, and many more as well as collaborating with Tarja Turunen (ex-Nightwish) and other prestigious soloists, ‘Symphony For The Lost’ not only presents classic and current Paradice Lost songs in an very different musical fashion, but also in an impressive visual setting, namely the ancient Roman Theatre of Philippopolis in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.
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Watching the performance, the sense of occasion is palpable. But then, the out-of-time ‘oi, oi, oi’ chants from the audience and crass shout-outs to the crowd like ‘how fucking cool is this?’ very much undermine it.
It’s hard to fault the performance, or the arrangements, and the accompanying footage is magnificently shot. And so it comes down to the material. The ingredients are all there, and the orchestra is, as of and in itself, immense and captivating. But for all the theatre, and all the poise, all the brooding, there’s something about the goth-tinged latter-day Metallica stylings that simply fail to resonate emotionally, and disc two, where the orchestra retreat and leave the band to churn out a straight-ahead guitar-driven goth-metal set only highlights the extent to which. Paradise Lost exist on the wrong side of the divide between art and artifice. Instead of touching the listener’s soul, they effect all of the manoeuvres without inhabiting the emotional spaces, offering more style than substance.
There’s bombast in abundance, and there’s no escaping the fact this sounds truly immense, but I can’t help but feel that I want more.
Paradise Lost Online
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