PARADISE LOST
“BELIEVE IN NOTHING”
(remixed & remastered)
Album Review by Dark Juan

5/10

Paradise Lost are: rather good, actually.

Nick Holmes – Vocals
Gregor MacKintosh – Lead guitars, keyboards
Aaron Aedy – Rhythm guitars
Stephen Edmondson – Bass
Waltteri Vayrynen – Drums. There’s an umlaut over the A. I daresay I could configure my keyboard to do umlauts, but frankly I just cannot be arsed. Sorry, Waltteri. Not.

Fittingly, to review this remixed and remastered record by famous Yorkshire miserablists Paradise Lost, I have chosen a stormy, grey and unpleasant day to do it on. There are pendulous clouds, pouring rain, thunder and lightning and absolutely no redeeming qualities to the day. Basically a summer day in Halifax, West Yorkshire, where Paradise Lost are from. This gives you some indication as to why they are such an unremittingly grim band. Igor the Evil One has eaten something that didn’t agree with him and is currently making smells which can only be described as cadaverous – imagine the smell of excrement, graveyard rot, undiscovered death, wet dog and crippling disappointment and you have quite a close approximation of the olfactory horror I am currently suffering. Mrs. Dark Juan is listening to Metallica and other 90s bands through the television while she makes clothes (she does them out of antique lace and stuff. They are quite spectacular) so I get random blasts of Enter Sandman in the gaps between songs. Random. I suppose I should better tell you something about this record then, although I am perfectly happy to just sit and chat…

This is a bit of a cynical release, if I’m honest. It’s a retread of their 2001 offering. Just remixed and remastered. The buggers haven’t even bothered to change the name of it. It’s saving grace is the fact that it is/ was (Tiswas? Sally James? Covered in custard and gunge? In tiny shorts and a t-shirt? Excuse me… I will be back shortly. There’s something I need to attend to quite urgently. If you’re too young to remember Tiswas, Google it or YouTube it. You’ll thank me later) such a splendid record in the first place. Following on from the less muscular, more electronic and melodic sound of One Second (which gave us the colossal single, Mercy) it is a steady development of the sound of it. One Second, as I recall, got an absolute panning from the metal press, so the response of the band to that was to make this record more metal, but keep the electronic and keyboard elements, making a very satisfying whole. Nick Holmes maintains the clean singing style he had adopted on Draconian Times, but even cleaner still and this is a vast contrast to the gravel throated gurgling he used to employ on the likes of Gothic and Lost Paradise. Ironically, the sound of Believe in Nothing is much more gothic than Gothic (which was gothic death metal.) Crikey, now I have Beck’s Loser seeping though the earphones while I am listening to swirling gothic keyboards of magnificence. Go away, you stupid ethereal, angular American. I’m communing with my Yorkshire gods. Mrs. Dark Juan needs a good talking to and a solid dose of some metal to rid her of this nonsense.

It’s hard to recommend this record, because it is so cynical. Just buy the original. I always find this remix/ remaster sort of thing difficult to swallow, especially if it is from a band as talented, original and capable as Paradise Lost. Rob Zombie is another guilty party here, too. Surely, for the amount of effort it takes to fanny around with the cymbal sound on track 22 in the studio twenty years after you have recorded a song, you could just like, you know, record a fucking new song? Jesus, another wave of stench reminiscent of an open, mass grave in the desert has just washed over me. It’s no wonder I feel like I am dying all the time. Don’t ever get a French Bulldog. They smell like latrine pits in the sun and shout at every single passerby from the window. Incessantly.

I don’t know what to do. Paradise Lost are a band I have been a fan of for over two decades. And it is a damned fine record. Every song is strong and atmospheric gothic metal of the highest calibre (but I already knew that because I bought the fucking original in 2001) and it’s a bloody good listen. BUT, it’s spectacularly poor value for money because this album already exists. To try and drag this stream of nonsense to a close then, I’ll say that this is one for completists only. If your entire universe is Paradise Lost, then knock yourself out playing the original and this remaster back to back and enjoy the hell out of comparing the quality of the crash cymbal and bass sounds and debating it with equally concerned friends. Otherwise, for the rest of you who just want to hear some good British lads (although Waltteri sounds like he should be in Lord Of The Fucking Rings – possibly from Finland?) ploughing their own peculiar furrow, choose between this or the original. Don’t buy both. And, to you, musicians of the world. I understand you’re trying to make a living from music and stuff, but PACK THIS FUCKING CYNICAL REMIX CULTURE IN!!!! I don’t need to hear Rammstein, Sex Gang Children or Cradle Of Filth with electronic beeps and squirts over them, and the vocals made incomprehensible by trickery. Bah, humbug.

The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System awards Paradise Lost 5/10. Had they not hurriedly retreaded a past release it would have 9/10. Dark Juan does not approve of usury. Anyway, the rating corresponds to a regular, if unpleasant, murder of a prostitute, like in Hollywood films, being investigated by a generic fat cop with relationship issues and alimony payments to make, with a world weary attitude and a wisecracking partner.

TRACKLIST

I Am Nothing
Mouth
Fader
Look At Me Now
Illumination
Something Real
Divided
Sell It To The World (How spectacularly ironic!)
Never Again
Control
No Reason
World Pretending

www.paradiselost.co.uk
www.facebook.com/paradiselostofficial/

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