Paradise Lost
What can fans expect from your Australian tour?
It's our second time there, we did a show 20 years ago and we did Soundwave. It's been a while since we have been there! We have so many songs to choose from now, the new album seems to have been received really well everywhere. It's good to do a headline set where we can have a decent amount of time instead of only having 20 minutes and I'm really looking forward to doing some headline shows. We will do a good selection of the material.
How do you select what songs you will play on tour?
Usually it's determined by your latest record because you are promoting that, so that becomes the backboard of your set and then you tailor it around that. However that is very different from how you pick a set for a festival because for a festival it's a best of.
You have a lot of variations of songs how do you decide what goes on the final Album?
Lots of second guessing yourself! Myself and the singer Nick, go back and forth with each other until we are both confident. It's usually not a very quick process. It was much quicker on this album because we accepted the way we write songs. We have 10 versions of each song at the time and we keep tweaking them until one pops out and stands out.
How did you come up with your album cover for Medusa?
We went to this company called Branka in Spain, who do more traditional rock, vintage and metal covers and we wanted to do somthing that looks like a classic Paradise Lost cover. It was their concept but we did go back and forward with them a few times, we didn't just want a woman with snakes for hair. We wanted somthing more thought provoking than that and we came up with a really strong image. When you come up with album covers you come up with somthing people will take a second look at because it's eye catching and I think they achieved that, it's also made good t shirts which is a bonus.
You recorded your album at Orange studios with Jamie Gomez what was it like recording an album with him?
He's a really laid back guy! A little bit of a hippie so it's very easy going, we do it at our own pace and his studio is in the middle of nowhere so it almost like being in a commune and being back in the 60s for a short time. While recording I think you need that because we have recorded in various places all over the world and when you are in the center city recording you can loose focus a bit. With Jamie its very laid back and easy to keep focus and keep on the ball, he has a very experimental guy in the studio and I like that. It was very good for this new record! We didn't take any amps in the studio we just used his gear, he has got all this weird and wonderful equipment in the studio.
You used Dave Grohls snare drum, can you tell us more?
When Nirvana used to play Europe, Dave used to keep his snare drum in Europe. Over the years it's got lost in the corner of a hire company and Jamie found it and bought it it's a huge snare drum that is deep and it really suited the sound of the record.
what was it like playing such a low tone?
You can't please everyone and it's not to everyone's liking. A lot of people complained about the snare sound but to me it's the sound of a real snare drum! Metal over the last decade or two everyone's gotten used to the sound of drum replacements, so they are listening to the sounds of replacement not real drums. So when you play drums again it might sound a bit weird to people which is odd
If you could have any band play play one of your songs which band would it be and in your style or theirs?
Dead Can Dance doing a orchestral version of our songs. For a commercial version of our songs I’d choose Metallica.
How did you come up with your band name?
It’s a book from a permit card John Milton, it's hundreds of years old. By the time we started our band it was in a scene when the bands were called stuff like carcass and napalm death and all that so they were all very obvious extreme metal band names and at the time we thought: wouldn't it be interesting to not have anything like that? But rather, something very detached from that? We still played that when we first started, we were very heavy death metal with a name like paradise lost you would never guess
You are considered to be one of the Pioneers for death metal and Goth metal, what made you want the start a new genre?
We were just blending a few musical Styles we liked very innocently and I guess, Right Place Right Time, people just dug the sound and really liked it. Then it flourished from there and then a bunch of bands came along but were influenced by us and then the fans came along that were influenced by them and before you know it a genre was born. It wasn't somthing we set out to do.
in 1997 you changed your style of music to electronica, what made you want to go in a different direction?
Bordom for them. I challenge anyone who does this for a living to release the same record over and over again for 20 years with any type of passion. You have to diversify if you are going to play music constantly for that length of time. I think the bands that do that, not all of them, but some of them have to be very cynical about that and think that they're just releasing records to aim at a certain audience. We don't really do that we just follow our own path and sometimes that gets us in trouble with the metal fraternity and sometimes they don't.
Are there any announcements you would like to share with your fans anything for your 30th anniversary?
We are playing Australia. For our 30th anniversary we would just like to celebrate at the pub and then go for a curry, but with record labels and management it will be a big show somewhere or something we are talking about making a festival or something like that with bands that are influenced by us.
Paradise Lost Press Release - Paradise Lost
Paradise Lost Review - Paradise Lost Review
Paradise Lost Tickets - https://metropolistouring.com/paradiselost/
