DOOM-death pioneers and, later, Goth rock explorers Paradise Lost are returning to Australia in October. After a gap of five years – interrupted by a very low-key, re-interpretation of 1993’s Icon – Paradise Lost released their latest album in September last year. That revisitation of their earlier sound seems to have bled into Ascension, their seventeenth studio album.
Ahead of their commitments to Europe’s summer festival circuit, we interviewed vocalist Nick Holmes.
HOT METAL: First of all, congratulations on Ascension. It seems to be something of a collection of the different styles Paradise Lost has played over your career. There was quite a break in between albums of new material from you this time.
NICK HOLMES: “We had quite a bit of time. We had something like five years to work on it. It’s usually about three years, but we don’t have any plans. That’s just the way it worked out. The pandemic sort of bought us another two years, so it sort of worked in our favour. I think you can have too little time, and too much time, sometimes. It was just a sweet spot. Obviously a band that’s been around as long as us… every band churns out an album for the first ten years of their career, anyway. It’s the nature of it. You just churn an album out very quickly. It’s almost like an album a year, for the first couple of years. We’re not alone like that. A lot of bands did that then. But later on you get a bit of time to sit back and think about what you’re going to do and where you’re going to go. It was kind of a bit of a sweet spot for this one.”
HM: The pandemic did seem to be a period where people were either not creating anything or gave them an impetus to create. Was that a particularly creative time for Paradise Lost?
NH: “Not really. We did the Host album, Gregor and myself, during that time too. We sort of did that early on. It’s just something that sort of happens. If you’re doing a painting, or writing, or anything, and you just get in a vibe with it and keep on going. It’s like anything. Sometimes you have really productive days, and some days you just can’t do anything. You hit a wall. It doesn’t matter what’s going on in the outside world. As long as we’ve got electricity, you can get on with something. It wasn’t the best of times, especially early on in the pandemic. It was a very bizarre situation here in the UK. Our writing process didn’t really change. We rarely see each other when we write. We fileshare, and we’ve done fileshare writing for probably the last fifteen years, so as long as the internet’s still working, we could still do what we’ve always done.”
HM:So you tend to work in isolation from each other?
NH: “Yeah. The jamming thing’s never really… Obviously we did that in the first few years of the band, because the internet didn’t exist then. It’s more productive. Sometimes when you’re together and you agree on things, the next day you might agree that it’s not a very good idea, and it’s like wasting time that way. But also, at the same time, if you’re sending things to one another and the other one doesn’t like it and you’ve spent ages and ages and you think it’s fantastic and they shoot you down in flames, that can also be soul-destroying. So you can never get overly precious with something. I try not to get too precious with something. I can sometimes give Gregor a sneak peek at something, so he knows what’s going on, so I don’t spend all day going down this avenue and it then gets shot down in flames. There’s pros and cons with everything, I guess, but it’s more productive working remotely than jamming in the same room. Because you can both go down the same shit road sometimes, and then it’s just a waste of time!”
HM: There must be times, though, where Gregor’s sent you something that’s totally blown you away. I’m sure that’s happened!
NH: “Absolutely. But at the same time, if he’s sent me something that I’m not impressed with I will not dismiss it until I’ve at least… I will never just go, “No, I don’t like that.” Because anything that I instantly dismiss can turn out to be amazing down the line. So I never dismiss anything on first hearing, even if there’s some weird timing or something that doesn’t gel on first hearing. I like the challenge of trying to write with something that’s out of my comfort zone. That’s a really big challenge. You try and try and there’s still nothing happening, you’ve got to put it on the shelf. We’ve got a lot of stuff over the last four years or so. There’s plenty on the shelf. There’s some riff and song ideas that we’ve brought back from ten years ago. He can send me a riff in a new version and I’ll be like, “Oh I remember this riff from all those years back.” There’s no rules with it, really. You do what you do and hope it turns out good in the end.”
HM: Paradise Lost has a very extensive catalogue now. Are there times when you dig into the archives when you’re rehearsing or getting ready for tours?
NH: “Yeah we do it all the time. Even from a rehearsing point of view. When we were teenagers we would always meet in the rehearsal space and it would become a social event. Then we would go out to the pub after. It was always a social time. We’d hang out in the rehearsal space all day, then eventually we’d start drinking and then we’d go out. It was a Saturday night and everyone would look forward to that. Obviously that’s gone by the wayside as we’ve got older, now. We rehearse if we’ve got a tour coming up and we rehearse if we’re changing the set. We spend a few days doing that. The regularity of rehearsing isn’t the same now, and that’s the same with all bands. Nobody lives near each other anymore, everyone’s dotted around the country. You’ve got to organise it. You can’t just rock up to the rehearsal space! By that token, I always sing along to the albums, so I listen to them regularly. So I hear what we were doing then, it’s not like I haven’t played them for ages. So I’m singing along to the album, doing karaoke with myself. It’s a pretty productive way of rehearsing, actually, in spite of what some people may think. Also, a lot of the time, a rehearsal environment is not the same as an onstage environment, so we try and build a stage and get our in-ear monitor systems working. I guess that’s classed as “pre-production” now. It’s a posh way of saying rehearsal. Gone are the days of just making some absolute racket in a room in Bradford, and all you can hear in cymbals for about five miles in every direction!”
HM: What is your agenda between now and your Australian visit?
NH: “We’re really busy this year. I’ve just literally had a month away on tour. We’re super busy. Also my other band Bloodbath is super busy this year, as well, so I’ve got a lot of gigs with that. I’ve got two weeks off now, but then it’s all full until December, really. We’re playing before we get to Australia. We’re playing China. We’ve never played there before. We’re playing India. Again, we’re never been there. So we’re looking forward to venturing into those places. We’re pretty busy.”
HM: I’m glad you mentioned Bloodbath then. That’s a very different band to Paradise Lost, so do you have to get into a different mindset when you write or work with that band?
NH: “Yeah. I just pretend I’m a fifteen year old teenager again! In my head, I am. Then I see the video of us playing, and I’m not! But in that brief hour that I’m playing, I’m stepping back into that stuffy fifteen year old death metal fan that I was. It’s quite therapeutic for that reason. It really takes you back to the golden years of death metal, and I love it for that reason.”
HM: I remember when you first started doing that, and then you came back to doing Paradise stuff, it seemed to bring back some of that death metal energy back into the band. I recall doing an interview with Gregor at one point and asking, “What’s with Nick? He sounds angry again!”
NH: “I think it was similar with Gregor too, when he did Vallenfyre. Everything sort of goes around in circles. You kind of drift off things, and then you get back into them later on. It’s like a surge now in bands that everyone loved when they were teenagers – they’re bigger than ever now. They’re playing stadiums! That’s really come round again. People get to a certain age and there’s less life ahead of them than behind them and they’re thinking, when was I at my most happiest? Probably at around 16, listening to Maiden and Metallica!”
HM: Is death and doom metal just being angry that you’re not 16 anymore?
NH: “I don’t know! But it definitely keeps you younger – even if it’s not in physical looks, it certainly keeps you young in the head. We don’t really behave any different than when we were teenagers. We’re exactly the same: childish humour – ridiculously childish humour, pissing about like we used to. Nothing has changed at all, except that we look like we should be doing something better with our lives at our age!”
HM: Is there anything better that you could be doing with your life?
NH: “This is the irony: absolutely not! I have many friends who have proper jobs and they fucking hate it! So it’s great. No complaints from me.”
TOUR DATES
OCTOBER 18: The Triffid, Brisbane
OCTOBER 19: Factory Theatre, Sydney
OCTOBER 20: Max Watts, Melbourne