Album Review: Paradise Lost - Icon 30
Reviewed by Gareth Pugh
It’s hard to believe that UK’s premier Doomsters Paradise Lost’s fourth album Icon, is approaching 30 years of existence! It only seems like yesterday I was picking it up at the local record store. I had been a casual listener of the band since hearing ‘Deadly Inner Sense’ from their debut Lost Paradise album on a John Peel show a few years previously, although it wasn’t until I picked up second album Gothic on a record buying trip to Manchester that I really became a fan.
Third album Shades of God was very good although, for me personally, it didn’t quite live up to its predecessor, but Icon saw the band branch out and embrace a slightly less doom orientated sound and added more classic metal influences into the mix, and Nick Holmes dialled back the growls and took on a more melodic singing voice, although he took some time to perfect this and he did struggle at times with a slightly ‘flat’ delivery, or the odd ‘off’ note here and there, and it wasn’t until ‘Draconian Times’ that he perfected his cleaner singing voice.
So, what does Icon 30 bring to the table, the original album had a great sound, it was certainly the best produced Paradise Lost album at the time. Well the re-recording is definitely looser and more live sounding than the original, while the songs have been faithfully and thoughtfully re-visited, so there’s no glaring arrangement changes, they haven’t suddenly added a saxophone solo into ‘Remembrance’ for example.
One thing of real notice is Nick’s vocals, he is definitely a better singer now than he was back in 1993, and he’s much more comfortable with the material now than he was at the original time of recording. If you’re not familiar with the album or the band (where have you been) then this a real treat of an album. The sound is built on main songwriter and lead guitarist Greg Mackintosh’s doomy riffs which are churned out wonderfully by himself and rhythm guitarist Aaron Aedy, while Greg himself plays wonderfully evocative lead melodies and solos. Of course, in order to do this the rhythm section, the bass of Steve Edmondson and the drums of new stickman Guido Zima Montanarini, has to be as solid as bedrock, which of course it is, and Montanarini is fairly faithful to the Matt Archer’s original patterns, whilst impairing a bit of his own style and personality into the proceedings.
The songs themselves are from a band that at the time were approaching a songwriting peak, and tracks such as opener ‘Embers Fire’ and ‘True Belief’ manage to sound both bleak and doom filled, while and at the same time being infectiously catchy. There are some extremely miserable titles here, with the likes of ‘Joys of the Emptiness’, ‘Weeping Words’ and ‘Colossal Rains’ and the band easily match the dismal dreariness of the lyrics with an equally depressive musical accompaniment. That’s not a complaint, this is exactly what the band were looking for and they still find plenty of hooks and melodies to keep you enthralled.
Whether you’re a fan of re-recordings is obviously a personal choice, but sometimes, like on this occasion, in order for the band to reclaim the album as their own, due to old contractual and legal issues, these drastic measures have to be taken, and as the band have been quick to point out, the new version isn’t meant to replace the original but to complement it. It is certainly a fascinating listen, but it will probably be of most interest to long-time fans and completists rather than casual followers. In that way Icon 30 is unique in being both very enjoyable and yet relatively unessential at the same time, but that's just my opinion. It’s a tough one, if I come to listen to Icon in the future, I’m not sure which one I would go for, if I could have the music from ’93 and the vocals from 2023 I’d probably go for that, but as that’s not an option, I’ll just have to go back to Gothic or latest album Obsidian for my Paradise Lost fix! The final question then, is Icon 30 relevant, well ultimately, that’s a choice only you can make.
