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.<\/p>\n
There was just one support slot and that was Swallow The Sun<\/b>; 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.<\/p>\n
After half an hour the stage got cleared for Paradise Lost<\/b> 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.<\/p>\n
Oh and then when I had to drive back raining was pouring down extremely hard with mighty thunders. Not a pleasant drive really :\/<\/p>\n
Setlist Paradise Lost<\/p>\n
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