Paradise Lost – Faith Divides Us Death Unites Us

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More epic, harder, angrier; a refreshingly heavy version of the direction they’ve taken with the last two albums. Those saying this is a return to form are wrong, because there was no loss of form to regain, but this has surpassed previous efforts. This is another sign, were any further indicators necessary, that Paradise Lost are not content to retread old ground on new albums. It’s another evolution for the band, taking the fastest, heaviest parts of the previous album as a starting point and bringing back some of the aggression of their earliest years into a mature statement that’s just as grand as their mellower albums. The riffs here are some of their most complex, rooted less firmly in the slow pace of epic doom metal than the last discs, but not entirely in any faster sub-genre either. In the heaviest parts Nick Holmes’ vocals sound a little like Matthew Barlow (Iced Earth), and the rest of the time the Holmes listeners will be used to, against an impossibly heavy backdrop taking elements of gothic, doom and traditional heavy metal fleshed out with their usual sparing use of strings and similar orchestral flourishes, reverb’d clean guitars and haunting keyboard lines. This is their hardest, most dynamic record for some time. And their best, possibly ever. Picking a stand-out track is too difficult. And probably unfair.

Written by Andy Lye
More: Albums, Doom Metal, Quick.Play Reviews, Paradise Lost