Ascension
The shadow and the light of Paradise Lost
Talking about Paradise Lost means talking about one of the pillars of dark metal, a band that shaped doom/death in the 90s, opened doors for gothic metal, and over the decades showed that reinvention and consistency can walk hand in hand. From the dense, dragging days of Gothic, through their electronic incursions, to the heavy return to their roots in recent albums, they have always kept an unmistakable identity: the blend of profound melancholy with riffs that seem to carry the weight of an entire graveyard. Now in 2025, the band delivers Ascension, a record that not only reaffirms their relevance but also feels like a condensation of their entire journey in one album.
The atmosphere of the album
When I put Ascension on, the mood is somber, yet not suffocating, it’s an invitation to dive into shadows that paradoxically reveal beauty. The production is crystal clear, every instrument given space to breathe, yet without losing the density that has always defined the band’s sound. There are crushing riffs, melodies that snake like specters, and drums that pulse as though they were the heart of a colossal sleeping creature.
Voices guiding through the darkness
Nick Holmes is at a brilliant point in his career: he alternates between guttural growls that seem to emerge from the depths of the earth and cleaner lines filled with bitterness and melancholy. This duality gives the album a unique dramatic richness. His delivery is not just technical but emotional, as if each word were a lament or a whisper lost among forgotten ruins.
Power and melody in balance
What struck me most in Ascension is the balance between heaviness and melody. The riffs carry the brutality typical of doom/death, but there are always melodic lines seeping in like rays of light filtering through broken stained glass. The result is music that not only crushes but also moves you. It feels as though the band gathered fragments from all their past eras to create a work that looks toward the future without denying the past.
A coherent journey
Listening to the entire album feels like traversing interconnected chapters of the same story. There are no tracks that sound out of place, everything is stitched together by a cohesion that keeps the listener immersed from start to finish. This isn’t a collection of random ideas, but rather a manifesto of artistic maturity, built with the patience of those who know time works in favor of greatness.
Conclusion: a dark rebirth
Ascension is both familiar and surprising. Familiar because it carries the trademarks we always identify in Paradise Lost: heaviness, melancholy, dark lyricism. Surprising because it shows that after so many decades, they still have the energy to sound urgent, relevant, and artistically vibrant. It’s an album that you don’t just listen to, you experience it, like a storm that falls slowly but leaves deep marks on the ground. For those who have followed the band since the early days, it’s like seeing old ghosts return, but dressed in new forms. For those arriving now, it’s the perfect invitation to discover one of the most essential names in heavy metal.
