Crucify... Fear Of Impending Hell... Honesty In Death... To The Darkness... Yup, although Tragic Idol is a record that steers Paradise Lost away from the gothic metal sub-genre in which they made their name and reputation in the early 1990s, they retain their capacity to brood doomily on the darker side of life, or at least on the inevitable outcome of it.
Luckily (if luck is a concept that Paradise Lost are open to) the fearsome delivery of Nick Holmes and the creativity of their mighty riffage offer a palette broad enough to break the band out beyond the teenage bedroom. In This We Dwell might have come from Ride The Lightning; To The Darkness offers up Tony Iommi-style fills.
What Paradise Lost do best though is summon a slow and deathly rhythm that develops, over the course of songs like Crucify and Tragic Idol, into a kind of grandeur.
You may not want to hang around forever in their headspace, but it can be a hell of a place to visit.
