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By BRIAN GIFFIN
ANYONE with a passing knowledge of Paradise Lost will likely be aware of the stylistic diversions they have taken over their near 40-year career.
Ascension is a celebration of all of them, something that might come across as jarring and disjointed until you take the time to actually listen and hear the way Paradise Lost has crafted these songs and made them work together.
“Serpents of the Cross” opens the album in a distinctly crushing manner, an aggressive and heavy track that brings all the band’s best hallmarks to bear – massive doom riffs, sorrowful harmonies and an air of anger and despair that arises from the throat of Nick Holmes, sounding as menacing as he ever has.
“Tyrant’s Serenade” adds a touch of the Gothic, again through the voice of Holmes as he leans into a dark croon. “Salvation” rolls out dark black gloom as Paradise Lost assert their mastery of the genre they helped to create: soul-wrenching doom built on Gregor Mackintosh and Aaron Aedy’s portentous riffs and the majestic drumming of Guido Zima for Holmes to enliven with an impressive blend of dark, anguished and soaring vocal takes.
Sullen acoustic guitars construct a harrowing atmosphere for “Lay A Wreath Upon the World”, further enhanced by female vocals wailing in the darkness and “Diluvian” leans into their flinty-riffed Draconian Times-era with a dynamic structure and a spirit-summoning guitar break from Mackintosh, something he brings forth again in “The Precipice” to close the album out. Elsewhere, “Sirens” flirts with their turn-of-the-century electronics phase, but even as it retains the heaviness, it remains the least remarkable Ascension track. On an album as strong as this, though, it still finds a place.
It would have been easy for them to merely knock out a pot-boiler at this point in their hallowed career, but Paradise Lost has always been a band that has striven for excellence regardless of their direction or the reaction it has caused, and in bringing together the best-engineered aspects of all their creativity, they have unleashed a high-water mark of late career endeavour.
