One of England’s most revered bands, Paradise Lost’s influence has a wide reach across the metal firmament. Constantly evolving, Paradise Lost’s back catalogue contains an embarrassment of riches, from the austere beauty of Gothic to the remarkable Obsidian, and few fans can agree on the band’s finest hour.
Most would agree, however, that Draconian Times is a high point in the band’s career. A stunning record that combines an atmosphere of stately decay with towering metallic riffs, Draconian Times refined and streamlined the band’s sound to that point, the gorgeous artwork (Holly Warburton) drawing the listener into a world entirely of the band’s making. Hugely influential, Draconian Times set the blueprint for much that followed, and it still sounds remarkable today, some twenty-five years after it first appeared on the scene.
To celebrate this milestone, we caught up with the band’s front man, Nick Holmes, to discuss the album’s enduring legacy, the ideas at the heart of Draconian Times and the remarkable power of Obsidian.
How are you doing?
Not too bad thank you, aside from spending my entire life in front of a computer these days!
Yeah yeah, I hear you. Pretty much like that myself, I’ve got to admit, yeah.
Yeah, I think you’ve been hitting the interviews pretty hard for about the last two months, haven’t you?
Yeah. I think probably May – June was the craziest time, around the album launch. But yeah, it was full-on for a while. But we have quite a few more now to do with the reissue of Draconian Times, so yeah, it’s all good.
Well, thank you so much for takin the time to speak with me and I do really appreciate it.
All good.
The first question is to do with the band as a whole. I’ve always felt Paradise Lost’s story is one of re-invention and evolution and the first step for that, I guess, was probably Gothic, because I think you’ve said in previous interviews that it better represented the band’s ambitions than your debut, is that right?
Yeah. I mean, we were quite quick to do an album really. It didn’t seem that much time had passed since we had started the band that we were doing an album really, so no one really had a clue what we were doing, I guess, in a lot of ways. We were very wet behind the ears, including Hammy as well, who did the album, He was the same as us, really, he was learning his craft like everybody else was. The only person who knew what he was doing was Keith A who was the studio engineer. But, at the same time, he knew nothing about our style of music, either. He’d never heard anything like that before [laughs] so, I think he was kind of horrified when he heard my singing for the first time. So, he knew what he was doing, but he’d never heard that kind of music before. So, yeah, after that, I think quite a lot of bands went to Academy Studios as a result of that album. But, yeah, we were just kind of very much getting a little bit more into goth music (as in traditional Goth music), but obviously we were all into the doom and death metal – that’s what we were into and where we started. But yeah, we were into Sisters and stuff, and that had a heavy influence on that album whereas we basically just combined the two.
After Gothic you moved very quickly to Music for Nations – did that move provide the band with more resources in terms of recording and presentation to allow you to step forward to Icon and Shades of God.
Yeah, we signed with management… with Andy, who’s still our manager after all these years – yeah. We got management and all of a sudden, he was pushing us with different labels, and everything started moving. Then we did the Shades of God album, which was a lot more of… not as goth-y as the previous one, but it was a raw, heavy album. The singing was kind of in between growling and not growling. It kind of sounds alright, but it’s incredibly difficult to do [laughs] and I haven’t repeated it since. Even though I kind of liked it, it’s almost impossible to do it, so there were a lot of sore throats during that session!
But yeah, then we got Simon Efemey in, who was on at least another two albums. So, yeah, it was a combination of that, our manager pushing us, and we did a lot of live shows, touring and yeah, we were certainly on a roll for a good eight years around that time, I think.
My first experience of Draconian Times was going into a Virgin Megastore and there was this stack of the most amazing artwork – the Draconian Times Tour Edition, which was a long box showing off the artwork even better – and straight away, it felt like nothing I’d ever seen before and I was wondering if there was a conscious decision within the band to adopt that imagery as a symbol of the band’s evolution to that point?
Imagery has always been really important to us. We’ve always been into the more artistic side. We always loved artwork – we grew up looking at album covers and the artwork and reading the lyrics and listening to the music all at the same time, so everything melted into one thing. So, the artwork was always… I think the early Noise albums and, particularly, Celtic Frost were always really great album covers and it just kind of went hand in hand. We still think like that when we think about our work. We still want really good artwork, which represents the whole thing and Draconian Times was very much a part of that and, obviously, we always liked the label – 4AD, who did the Pixies artwork and Dead Can Dance and the artwork was always great on those releases. It wasn’t metal artwork at all, but it was so very dark and almost religious a lot of the time and we just loved that visual aspect and we’ve kind of kept with that ever since really. But yeah, I guess that the kind of metal clichés – we’ve always art wise veered away from that a little bit. You can still have a lot of darkness in there without having, you know, flying V guitars on the album covers [laughs].
It’s something that I still do, but I think that might well be the first album I bought on the strength of the artwork alone under the assumption that nothing that cool could possibly disappoint… and it really didn’t!
Yeah, that was the thing! I was very much the same with that. If I see something that grabs me art wise, it’s a really good starting point. At the same time, there have been fantastic albums that have appalling artwork! You know, really bad artwork! But it’s always nice if you start off on a good foot you know.
The album itself felt, to me, like a refinement of everything that had gone to that point and, of course, afterwards you rang out the changes with One Second, which emphasised the gothic atmosphere, so was there a feeling in the band that you were already looking to develop the sound in that kind of direction when you did Draconian Times?
I think that it was a more polished version of Icon. There’s a kind of a blurry period around then and I can’t really remember writing a bunch of the album, apart from the fact that we went through a period where we didn’t have a drummer. So, we were kind of writing songs just to generic beats just on this drum machine which… I still don’t know where it came from! I don’t know what happened to it either – we’ve never seen it since! [Laughs] One thing about having a career that spans decades is that you acquire equipment and you lose it just as quickly. You don’t even know where it came from or where it went, and the drum machine was one of those things – we had no idea where it came from. I didn’t know how to use it either – it was some Roland thing so, we… it was like something from Bad News, we just kept doing this generic beat and we had like a Fostex four track cassette… I can’t remember exactly. One of the first multi-recording things we used. So, yeah, it was a bit of a weird time. It wasn’t nice being in between – having no drummer – I remember that being quite stressful but, yeah, we got through it.
Sound wise, we were starting to listen to Queensryche a little bit more, that kind of thing – so that was an influence on us. And Lee Morris, our drummer who came in for that album, he was a huge fan of Scott Rockenfield and those kind of thrashy drummers of the late eighties, so that really rubbed off on the album, I think. The production on the album does represent those days – I think it sounds like a real 90s album, and I can listen to it now for what it is, and it fits in really well amongst the other albums of that time. So, production wise, it’s kind of those splashy cymbals and, you know… none of us had particularly big hair… bit it was a big hair period for sure!
I’m sure I remember at that time that a lot of journalists were throwing around phrases like “the new Metallica” and I was wondering how much that kind of hyperbole helped, and perhaps hindered, at the time.
I think that was pretty much Kerrang who said that. I think we got a cover and that was one of the things on the cover. That time, we were getting a lot of European press and a lot of the attention was from the Headbanger’s Ball, which Vanessa Warwick hosted, which was the only source of TV – for rock and metal – at that time. There were a few things here and there, but it was a constant thing – the regular output on the Headbanger’s Ball that she hosted. She used to do a lot of features on us. We were regularly on there and I think that helped us enormously around that time. If that’s the only kind of source you’ve got, it was very similar to when I was a kid and we only had the Friday Night Rock Show with Tommy Vance. If you got played on there everyone would know you pretty quickly. So, yeah, it was incredible. And obviously Kerrang was in its prime at that point as well. Kerrang… everyone read Kerrang and Metal hammer as well, so yeah, we were very lucky, you know, we got a real break with the press all round, I think. We were kind of the right place and the right time, I think.
A little bit later, after One Second, you signed to EMI for Host and I’m sure I remember a story circulating around that time, that there was a promotional lorry full of laptops driving around to promote the album – and I was wondering about the dynamic of the band being on a major label at the time – was it easy to get lost in the whirlwind of it all?
It was a bit weird! Yeah, there was a big [laughs] eighteen-wheeler! Yeah, it had those first… whatever the Apple Macs – the ones with the PC built into the screen, I don’t know if you remember those, it was about the late 90s…
Absolutely, yeah!
You could go on the bus and look at our video through this screen. Now, when I think about it, it just feels so old-fashioned, but at the time it was quite modern, you know! Also, I don’t think the internet had quite reached mainstream adoption… [laughs] No, it hadn’t at that point! So, yeah, no one had smart phones or anything at that time. It was a bit of a strange thing. We kind of felt like small fish in a big pond. We felt like we had a lot of money thrown at us, but no one really knew how to promote it really. Especially the Host album, it wasn’t a metal album and we didn’t really look like metal guys anymore and it was a weird time all round. Even the metal scene was a bit weird then. I think it was around that time the nu-metal bands were starting to come through perhaps. It was a bit of a strange time all round, really.
There were a lot of personal things going on within the band – with our own personal issues and that. Yeah, very weird. I mean thirty years, or whatever it is, you’ve got to have a few years that are a bit strange, I guess [laughs].
Possibly one of my favourite Paradise Lost songs ever is on Host – It’s Too Late, which is a stunningly beautiful track – and it feels to me like it’s echoed in the Obsidian track, Darker Thoughts. It’s rare that we hear your vocals so naked and vulnerable.
I haven’t done that much clean stuff the last couple of albums. It’s more about what suits the song, really. When I’m writing stuff now, I’ll tend… Greg did that acoustic bit for Darker Thoughts later on in the writing process and he sent it to me, and it was originally going to be an intro. It wasn’t going to have any singing on it, it was just going to be an intro. Then, I came up with a melody line for it, because I quite like that folky feel to stuff. We turned it into a song… but yeah, I guess it’s whatever style suits what you’re doing. I think, a lot of the time, when I didn’t want to do the growling many years ago and I stopped doing it for a while, you kind of do a clean voice, but over a heavy riff, it kind of ruins it and loses the impact of everything, so I think you’ve got to do the right voice for the right part. If it sounds great doing an insane growl, then you’ve got to do it. I don’t want to be restricted to one style, if I can do others.
I think there’s always a perception that the heavier vocals are the harder to produce, but a quiet melody (especially on something like It’s too late, which is restricted in range, but has a lot of power and nuance) is difficult, especially in the studio with everyone watching from the control room. Do you have any warm-ups, or ways to combat that?
Um, the thing is with the clean singing – I think with anybody – there are so many variables because you can do one take and it’s right, or you can do ten takes, and they’re all right but one might just sound better. It’s OK, when the vocals are more… with death metal singing, it’s kind of right or wrong really. You could hold a line longer, but pretty much you can get it in a couple of goes. But there are so many different ways that you can sing clean stuff, and it’s also nice to get it in one [complete] take as well. When you’re chopping words up and things, it’s not as nice as if you get it all in one go. So, yeah, there’s a lot of room for manoeuvring with clean vocals, so yeah, I guess, it’s very different to recording gruff singing. Gruff singing is a lot easier to get down, you know. As long as you’ve got a good voice, and you haven’t been out all-night drinking, then you can pretty much do it and it’s not too difficult. For me, it’s about getting loads of sleep and just keeping my mouth shut really. But I think sleep is the biggest thing. If you get a good night’s sleep, it’s really helpful for vocals.
And I also use Vocalzone lozenges, as well. I’ve used them for years; I love them, and I’ve used them for about ten years. I go through absolutely packets of the things when I’m away. They’re great. But yeah, you can’t beat a good night’s sleep.
Those things are a life-saver – They’ve started doing tea now, and that’s great stuff.
Yeah, I’ve got loads of it here. I haven’t actually tried it. I do like tea, but I’ve kind of gone off it a little bit. But I haven’t tried their tea yet. I kind of stocked up because I thought we’d be on tour all year, and then all this shit happened [laughs] So, I’ve just got cupboards of it waiting to go. I don’t know what its sell-by date is. Hopefully it’s alright.
I have to use my voice for work a lot, and that stuff makes such a difference.
Yeah, it’s almost like… I sometimes wonder if it’s a placebo because I’ve got used to the taste of the lozenges, and as soon as I taste the lozenges, I instantly think that it’s working. You know what I mean, it’s like having a cigarette kind of thing – the cigarette’s not doing anything, but you think it is – so maybe it’s some kind of placebo effect, but whatever it is, it works. They sell shit loads of them, so…
It felt like there was a period, post-Host through Believe in Nothing, that Paradise Lost got a bit smaller in the UK but grew across Europe. I remember seeing you in Poland, in 2007 (I think) and it seemed that Europe really kept alive the love of gothic metal at that point.
Yeah, I think… places like Germany…. Germany’s changed a little bit, I think, in the last ten-fifteen years, but I think places like Greece, in particular, are very loyal. They still like the old bands. Manowar can always go to Greece, they’re still very loyal to the older bands. It has changed a lot. England has always seemed, for me, to follow America in the music trends and that always seems to have been the case with rock and metal, along with any other style of music, in the UK. But, yeah, particularly Germany was always great for us. The climate changed a lot. Like I said earlier. Nu-metal really changed metal music. Out of all the trends that have come and gone, or the sub-genres, I mean – grunge didn’t even affect us at all. And that was an enormous musical movement. And it didn’t affect us. But nu-metal really had an impact on everybody. It was a weird kind of thing. But we got through it, thank god! [Laughs]
I guess grunge was more on the outside of things – it kind of bridged the gap between metal and punk and rock, while nu-metal was more within metal, I guess.
Yeah, the bands were never that extreme – they were very musical and melodic as well. With nu-metal, there was a lot of noisy stuff in that as well. There were some horrendous things that came out as well, since that. Some kind of bands that you think “oh my god!” You can tell what they grew up listening to. There was… I think Korn actually get better with every album, to be honest. But yeah, the kind of early stuff, we felt old and we weren’t even old at that time [laughs]. We were just old gits when that stuff started, but we were probably early thirties or something.
Both Plague Within and Medusa were consciously very heavy albums, whereas Obsidian has taken a step towards the more crystalline, goth sound. That was something of a reaction to the previous two albums, do you think?
Yeah, it makes a bit more varied. If everything is kind of full-on with just gruff singing, after twenty-five minutes, it’s nice to just put something else in there. I always like variation. I mean, obviously, bringing back the gruff singing enabled us to make everything a lot heavier as well. I think you can do a lot more with that, but yeah, it’s really nice from my point of view as a vocalist to mix it up and it makes every song very individual. It’s not like one long song, forty-five minutes, like some bands who are constantly trying to out-heavy everything else, it’s nice to get a bit of subtlety in there every now and again.
I think that light and shade, for me at least, is one of the most important things. As you say, if it’s a constant blur of speed, you lose the weight and it’s a lot better to get those slower numbers and things.
Yeah, I mean, it even goes back to when I was listening to a band like venom. They kind of go into some weird acoustic sections on… I think it was the actual song At War with Satan. It was one of my favourites, when I was a kid, but there’s this whole middle section where it’s kind of like angelic harp or whatever. I always loved the fact that they brought that into it – it’s a completely different sort of thing to the rest of it. Even like, you know, Type O – they had very different songs. Yeah, I do like bringing softer parts… like you say, night and day kind of things.
Alongside the art of the albums (and the art of the recent albums has been really stunning, I think) the band has focused on narrative videos that fit the atmosphere of the album and I think I read somewhere that you were particularly keen on videos that stand as an extension of the art and atmosphere of the records over more performance-style videos, which are cool, but perhaps not as powerful.
Yeah, I mean for me, I always like videos that are very thought-provoking, and you try to figure out what’s going on. A lot of videos kind of copy films, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I think the last… Radiohead always have great videos. I think the last one they did, I think it’s ‘Don’t Burn The Witch’ Or ‘The Witch’ or something [Burn The Witch] and it’s like they’ve copied Camberwick Green, that used to be on when we were kids, and it’s like based on the Wicker Man Story, though. And the fact that they’ve done the animation for it makes it more sinister in a way and I love that. It’s very thought-provoking and it makes you think about stuff. So, yeah, performance videos -they’re OK. There’s a place for them. I think they’re much more suited to very physical bands, where they’re jumping around and going crazy and all that kind of thing – like a lot of hardcore bands. They really suit performance videos, I think, But I always like a bit of a narrative, where you don’t necessarily know what’s going on; or like a short story where you don’t really know what happens until the end. So, yeah, that’s always a lot more intriguing from my point of view.
And you’re quite a big horror fan, as well, I think…
Yeah! Massive, yeah! I kind of go in waves. As I get older, I go in waves. I get into it heavily for about six months and then come out of it for a little bit. I’m currently out at the moment, but I’ll be back in soon. [laughs] yeah, I went through a spell of checking out all the films that were made around the time I was born, in the early seventies. It was such a golden era for those kinds of films. I don’t know if it’s because I’m nostalgic, but I just think that the films that were made then were so much better than those in the decade from that because the eighties were pretty bad, I think. There’s some classics – Freddy Krueger, etc. you know, the Jason films. But I think, generally, they’re terrible compared to the seventies films.
There’s a real atmosphere on those movies – it’s a bit like making a record, they had to make it up as they went along and I think that in music or film, it leads to more creativity than simply building on what went before.
Yeah, the eighties… I think a lot of them were based around the style as well. There were those big hairdos and they were trying to get in the rock music, so… they just didn’t have the same thing at all. Even the English eighties stuff wasn’t great, but I think that I may try tapping into the eighties and seeing if there’s anything I can salvage from it [laughs]. There’s probably loads that I’m not thinking of, but yeah, the bigger ones that I can think of. They’re not that great really, but it’s fine.
There are some really good ones coming through and there’s a lot of crap out there, it’s like anything, but it’s always great when there’s a new horror film and it still surprises you by how good it is.
I’ve got one last question for you – with all the pandemic stuff everyone’s been thrown into disarray. Obviously now you’re doing the live stream as a kind of alternative Nov 5th and also to finally celebrate the release of Obsidian – how are the preparations for that coming along and how do you feel about the live stream experience?
Yeah, it’s great! As soon as this started happening, we figured it would be down the line somewhere. It’s never going to replace playing live – never. I don’t think anything could replace that. I guess, the sooner we’re back to that, everyone’s going to feel glad about it. But, you know, we haven’t played any of this stuff as a band beyond rehearsals, so it’s going to be interesting to air it and see what people think. But yeah, it’s the done thing, I guess, so you know… we’re doing it! [Laughs]
Joe Bonamassa did one relatively recently and, as a reflection of the times, he opted to have total silence between tracks and it was a great show, but it was a little weird at first (I guess for the band and the audience), kind of like watching a comedy and expecting the laughter track… have you had any thoughts about what to do between songs?
I’m not bothered! I probably won’t say anything. If I start shouting “come on!” and stuff… I’ve seen that done, actually, it’s worse than silence! [Laughs] You know, there’s going to be crew guys there and stuff… but yeah, it’s going to end up being worse than silence if you start shouting “Come on!” and shit like that.
I’ve always enjoyed your mordant stage announcements – it’s very atypical, but it fits the atmosphere…
Yeah, well, they work. They don’t always work [laughs]. If I’m not sure they’re going to work, I just don’t talk… and then everyone just thinks you’re miserable. I don’t know… I’ve seen a few of the things where it’s in between and it’s a bit weird. I’m not bothered about that. We don’t talk at rehearsals anyway, so it’s not going to make much difference.
