“People will think it has something to do with The Plague Of Londontown (in 1665), but it’s certainly not that,” says Paradise Lost vocalist Nick Holmes in regard to the title of his band’s 14th studio album, The Plague Within.

In fact, guitairst “Greg (Mackintosh) came up with the title. Titles are weird, cause you kind of grow into them,” reflects Holmes. “Everything always sounds alien at first, no matter what you call it. But Greg mentioned it a while back and I thought, maybe a song title. We were going to go with Beneath Broken Earth (the title of track five) for a while, but it was more to do with the mental state really; The Plague being the state of the mind.”

Musically, The Plague Within sees Paradise Lost offer up a wonderful selection of morbidly seductive doom, enlightened by an elegant string section, most notably on: “An Eternity Of Lies”, “Sacrifice The Flame”, and “Victim Of The Past”. “When we started doing the demos, sometimes things just… we’re big fans of classical music, scores, and movie soundtracks. A lot of our songs lend themselves to that,” admits Holmes. “The thing is, you can get carried away with it, so it’s a case of not overdoing it. We’ve used sampled strings before, but for this album we actually got real musicians in for it; a real cello player, a real violin. I can really hear the difference, between the real one and the sampled one; even though the samples are good. It just sort of lends itself to the melancholy, which is very much part of the band and has been for most of our career. We had two separate musicians, but they came in at different times. They just lined up the bits and pieces here and there. Basically, it’s an incidental thing; we didn’t want it to necessarily take over the song, which we have done a lot of in the past.”

Greg’s girlfriend, Heather Thompson, sings on “An Eternity Of Lies”. “Yeah, we re-recorded one of our songs, ‘Gothic’, and put it out about a year ago (on Tragic Illusion 25). She did the female vocal on that as well. She’s in the band Tapping The Vein; she’s always good to have around.” At one point, Paradise Lost had 15 different versions of “An Eternity Of Lies”. “There was probably even more than that. There’s versions that are very close to the finished one, but not quite. We get this a lot with our songs. We tend to… we’re such perfectionists, it’s kind of annoying really. You come back to something and you hope you’re going to like it this time but you never do because… that song springs to mind, especially the chorus. I really loved what Heather did on that, and we were trying to make it work around her singing line, but we couldn’t seem to get it together. Eventually, it clicked. It’s not exactly a complicated song, but sometimes the simplest thing is the hardest to put together.”

On August 17th in Bielefeld, Germany, Paradise Lost will perform The Plague Within live in its entirety. Will the strings and Heather’s vocals be sampled by the soundman, or is the band going to opt for rawer versions of the songs with just the five guys on stage playing? “The strings will probably be sampled. It would be nice, maybe Heather… I don’t know. She might be up for singing it live? We haven’t crossed that bridge yet, it’s kind of too early to tell.”

A video for “Beneath Broken Earth” was released at the beginning of May; the visuals suit the music perfectly. Of special significance is the fact that it’s the band’s slowest song, ever! Was that the intent going in? “We wrote the song towards the end of the recording process. Adrian (Erlandsson) was actually tracking drums as we wrote that song. We wrote it in a very old school way, we didn’t try chopping it up, or think we needed a chorus necessarily. It was merely about getting the vocals right, we didn’t change the music whatsoever; we kept the structure the same. We wrote it how we used to years ago, which was quite nice in a way; we didn’t go over it too much. With that said, I guess cause it was written in an old school manner, we probably went back in our heads to Candlemass and the early Sabbath, Vitus – the stuff we used to like then. We changed how we wrote that one and it seems quite fresh as a result of that.”

Last year, Nick took some time away from Paradise Lost to sing on Bloodbath’s Grand Morbid Funeral – which was the #1 BravePick of 2014. Greg and Adrian also took some time away for the second Vallenfyre album, Splinters. Did working on side projects recharge the batteries, resulting in more exciting and free-flowing sessions for The Plague Within? “It’s quite nice. I think Greg would probably say the same thing; we’ve been doing Paradise Lost for so long (the band’s first album, Lost Paradise, was released in 1990), it’s nice to have a side outlet, to do both. Because obviously Vallenfyre is very different, and so is Bloodbath. I find it quite refreshing, but it’s finding time to do both. I didn’t realize how hard it is trying to juggle two bands. It keeps you busy. Adrian’s in many bands (At The Gates, The Haunted, Nemhain), I don’t know how he does it? He’s the busiest drummer there is. But I think it’s beneficial. Whether there’s any inspiration – direct or indirect – there’s going to be something you take from it I guess. The death metal singing in Bloodbath helped me prime for the PL album; I found my footing with it, there’s no doubt about that. But it’s different music altogether really; I like doing both, it’s cool.”

The Plague Within marks the first time Paradise Lost has worked with producer Jaime Gomez Arellano (Ghost, Ulver, Cathedral). “I liked a lot of the bands he worked with; he gets a very, for want of a better word, an organic sound. He likes real, live drum sounds. When I hear live drum sounds now, it’s almost like it’s a new thing because everybody’s using triggers and samples now. It’s become a little bit boring; it’s like a factory of metal. It’s refreshing to hear a kit miced up and recorded as a kit without using all these third party software devices. For me personally, I think it was the first Ghost album that I really liked. The sound on that album… it’s not a new sound but no one’s had a sound like that for a long time. It reminded me of the old Mercyful Fate albums, that kind of vibe. Plus, I didn’t know this, but he’s a big fan of death metal, and the old doom stuff; he’s a musician as well. Everything sort of nicely fit into place with him.”

Recording took place at Orgone Studios in London, England; the band’s first time in that facility. “Yeah, it’s a small studio Gomez runs in North London. It was a quiet, fragmented recording. We weren’t all there at one time for x amount of weeks. We went down in separate pieces. We couldn’t really do a studio report because there was no one around long enough to do one. You went down to the studio, you did your parts, you had dinner, and you went to bed; that was about it. It wasn’t like the days of the residential studios with tennis courts and swimming pools; that kind of thing is long gone. It was just, get on with it. But everyone knows what’s required of them before they even get in there.”

 

Select media outlets, including BraveWords, were provided with an advance song by song breakdown for The Plague Within, written by none other than Nick himself. We’ve decided to delve a little deeper into two of the ten songs that comprise the new album. The first being, “Terminal”, which Nick described as “a metaphor for love and harmony in the world that will never exist whilst religion does” - talk about a powerful statement. “When I was younger, I always felt that… I saw religious people around me. I was brought up as a Christian – until I was old enough to know better. You’re brought up that there is a God. There’s all these horrible things that happen, and I never really thought, why is this happening? If there really is a God, why would anything like this happen in the world? Every single thing that happens – when I say that I mean really bad things – to humans is always linked loosely to religion somehow. It just never seems to end. It’d be interesting to be in a world where there’s no religion. I’d be really intrigued to see what that was like – it will never happen; certainly not in my lifetime. Surely, the world would be better.”

Putting “No Hope In Sight” under the microscope, on certain off days, death would almost be welcomed. “It’s kind of a fitting theme, similar to ‘Terminal’. I’ve got two children, they’re not kids anymore; my oldest is nearly 19. But I’m quite comfortable with death now. Before I had children, I was very scared of it. I was always worried about it, but now death doesn’t bother me to be honest. All I care about is their welfare and that they’re happy. That’s all that matters to me. It’s weird how you change your mind. I also find it funny that as each generation comes along, you move nearer the edge; you get shuffled along, and eventually you topple over when it’s time.” Like lemmings off the cliff. “Yeah, it is. Or the coins in the machine in the arcade that move the other coins along,” chuckles Nick. “I feel like that a little bit. But it’s all good. With the liner notes, when I read it back I thought it was probably a bit harsh. But I’ve been doing the band for nearly all my life, so it’s kind of strange going from a teenager; I’m 44 now. I guess having children, and losing a relative, is the most significant thing that happens to you in life. For me personally, the death of my father and the birth of my two kids were the benchmark moments that makes you who you are.”

 

Detailed is an understatement when it comes to describing the artwork adorning The Plague Within. For the most part, Paradise Lost has had great album covers; with the exception of Host, Believe In Nothing, and Symbol Of Life. Now, Polish artist Zbigniew M, Bielak, (Watain, Ghost, Entombed A.D.) takes it to a new level. “I think he’d worked on Mayhem? We always really like the black metal artists, and we’re really into the dark artwork obviously. So we gave him the album title and the lyrics, and he came up with it. You have to see it high-res, cause low-res, you just don’t see it all; there’s a lot to look at! It reminds me of the old vinyl days; there’s loads going on.”

Century Media has announced a limited edition deluxe box set for The Plague Within, featuring a pair of exclusive bonus tracks: “Fear Of Silence” and “Never Look Away”. “We wrote 12 songs. We demo our songs to quite a finished state, so we have a pretty good idea of which songs are the best ones; but we really don’t know if they’re going to make the album or not. It’s really strange. Many years ago, we got to a point where we were writing songs that we figured were definitely singles, or definitely B-sides; but it’s such contrived crap. To write an album, it’s not a good way of writing. So we basically wrote 12 songs, and let the label decide what they want. I mean, I like them all in their own way. I can say that ‘Fear Of Silence’ is sort of semi-acoustic. It flashes back to the end of 2000 era of the band; it’s got that kind of feel to it. We thought it was a little bit light maybe. ‘Never Look Away’, at one point that was my favourite song, but then I thought the album didn’t necessarily need it after we wrote ‘Beneath Broken Earth’ and ‘Flesh From Bone’. But I think some of our best songs have been extra songs; we’ve done some crap ones as well. We had a song called ‘Sweetness’ that was one of our… we left it off of, I think it was Icon. It didn’t make it on the album, but that’s a really cool song. It’s just best to write your songs and let other people choose what they think is going to be an A or B.”

Paradise Lost has been with Century Media for almost a decade now, prior to that the band had been with Music For Nations and Peaceville, amongst other record companies. Weathering more than his fair share of changes, including variations in format; specifically cassette, CD and digital, Nick offers up his current thoughts on the music industry in 2015. “It used to be very lucrative in the ‘80s and the artists didn’t need to do very much to make a lot of money; it was very much like the footballers of today. We kind of came in at the back end of it, and now it’s completely changed. I remember when I first got online and how easy it was get music; I actually thought it was going to kill everything, and it kind of did. Now it’s all about playing live and merchandising; you can make a career from it, you just have to work incredibly hard to do it. You just have to adapt. You get these stars sitting around whining about it, there’s no point, you just have to change.”

Talking about change, one of the more recent developments sees Yahoo! Live streaming entire concerts – as they happen – free of charge. “People do it all the time though anyway. Most festivals stream it on their channel; it’s becoming quite the norm. It kind of takes the fun out of it because you have to be more serious about the performance. You can’t get as drunk as perhaps maybe you would like to,” laughs Nick. “You have to be more professional. It’s happened a few times, but it’s also happened when we didn’t realize it was happening, which was kind of annoying. I guess you’ve got to be on your game more. Again, you just have to roll with what’s happening.”

(Photos by Ester Segarra)