Paradise Lost
The Plague Within

First the granite death/doom of their beginnings, then the more gothic oriented turn of "Icon" and especially "Draconian Times", subsequently the electronic experiments of the (for me) underrated "Host", followed by a series of more anonymous albums. The return to good creativity with the self-titled album of 2005 and the new gothic/doom mix of works like "In Requiem" and "Faith Divides Us - Death Unites Us". Now, after 25 years of multifaceted and ever-changing career, the return to the past, extending the tentacles towards that powerful and melancholic doom of their early cries. Good or bad?

One thing is certain and established: few realities in the metal field have changed, experimented and explored broader horizons like the Halifax combo has done. Each new album is a mix of expectations and doubts about the path taken by PL. The latest "The Plague Within" is yet another confirmation of a musical reality that varies, changes, evolves, often surprising the listener.

The production (Century Media) highlights an album where arrangements and sounds stand out just enough to emphasize a style that has returned along the lines of works like "Lost Paradise" and "Shades of God", while maintaining a certain melodic taste which is the legacy of the latest works. "Terminal" is immediately an example of the comeback towards death, with an essential and bare structure, in contrast with the compositional "fullness" of the opener "No Hope in Sight", where growl and clean vocals alternate in a song with changeable shapes. Just the beginning of this TPW is enough to hear a convincing Nick Holmes behind the microphone, definitely more positive than what has been heard in recent years live. Impressions confirmed also in "Punishment Through Time", with a dark and old-style mood, where the always great Greg Mackintosh hails a riffing on the edge of thrash.

The already mentioned "Terminal" had warned us with "forget the past": a lesson that the English evidently do not seem to have assimilated, because they bring out "Beneath Broken Earth", one of the hardest, most retro, death, and melancholic tracks the band has ever produced in their entire history. An absolute gem in the manual of "how doom metal should sound".

The latest effort from Paradise Lost is an album that reconciles with the genre and sums up in 50 minutes an entire world (and way) of approaching the most monolithic gothic, the one that leaves no space for the pop-like openings so dear to the vast majority of modern bands. A work that rarely fails (except in the confusing "Victim of the Past").

Paradise Lost confirms themselves as one of the few reliable realities in the metallic cauldron, once again producing an album with multiple facets, which is at the same time different from the previous one but capable of encompassing all the faces worn by the group over the years.

A return of those pestilential ones. Welcome back, masters.

1. "No Hope In Sight" (4:50)
2. "Terminal" (4:27)
3. "An Eternity Of Lies" (5:56)
4. "Punishment Through Time" (5:12)
5. "Beneath Broken Earth" (6:09)
6. "Sacrifice The Flame" (4:40)
7. "Victim Of The Past" (4:28)
8. "Flesh From Bone" (4:18)
9. "Cry Out" (4:29)
10. "Return To The Sun" (5:44)