Third gig in three weeks, not bad. This time it was Paradise Lost. A band I haven’t seen live before despite I know them since their debut album in 1991 or so. Possibly because I was less than interested in their mid-era material with all the electronics crap and they never really seemed to play at any places and times for me. But they seemed to have picked up for a couple of years where they left with Draconian Times. And so they were touring a bit again with a new album under their belts. So off I went to Utrecht to the Tivoli, which is a pretty shitty place in an equally shitty town. Good thing it was a school holiday this week so traffic was light, otherwise 19.45 as a starting time would be hardly doable by car. Nevermind that they started half an hour later with a only half full venue.

There was just one support slot and that was Swallow The Sun; a decent Finnish doom/death band I’d seen a few times before. They also just released a new album and not surprisingly that filed most of their 45 minutes set, with just three songs of the earlier albums. Even thought it is a pretty good album, it’s a bit too much imo. Most of the gig seemed to be a band internal competition who could look the most angry. And I bet the keyboard player won. They played pretty tight but with little enthusiasm and the gig seemed mostly routine.

After half an hour the stage got cleared for Paradise Lost and the band opened surprisingly with Widow – a rather fast song of Icon. At least fast for Paradise Lost. Naturally we got a few songs of the new album, which sounded quite good. But what was less welcome – at least to me – was the inclusion of a couple of those crappy mid-era songs that seemed to fit better to a dance act than a metal band. Of course they skipped the first two albums entirely, but did manage to pull off two songs of Shades of God, namely Pity the Sadness and As I Die. Further the set list was a bit disappointing with just one song of the Faith Divides Us album and Draconian times. They played alright tho, the vocals were a bit thin, but I guess that is just the ageing of Nick’s vocals. Oh and Aaron managed to break no less than two strings during the gig. So all-in-all not a bad gig but I’m not really all that excited about it. Perhaps that is due to the diSEMBOWELMENT gig of two weeks ago which was really brilliant.

Oh and then when I had to drive back raining was pouring down extremely hard with mighty thunders. Not a pleasant drive really :/

Setlist Paradise Lost

• Desolate (intro)
• Widow
• Honesty in Death
• Erased
• Forever Failure
• Soul Courageous
• In This We Dwell
• Praise Lamented Shade
• Pity the Sadness
• As I Die
• Symbol of Life
• Tragic Idol
• The Enemy
• Encores:
• One Second
• Fear of Impending Hell
• Faith Divides Us – Death Unites Us
• Say Just Words