Paradise Lost (en)

"I think that people kind of followed us, really. There is not one specific album that everyone feels they are going to hear every time. No, people have followed us pretty well... I’ve never felt the need to lean on one particular period of our career."
Check out this conversation that Spirit of Metal had with Paradise Lost's frontman Nick Holmes on September 8th in Los Angeles!!!

interview Paradise LostYou guys have just started, a few days ago, this US tour with Katatonia and Devin Townsend. You haven’t toured the US for a while. Did you miss playing here
Yeah. I mean, I’ve been in the US many times on vacation but it is always good to play [here]. For European bands it is difficult to come here. Sometimes it is just very costly. It used to be a little easier years ago but now it is tough to come here. So yes, to come back here it’s great.

How has it been to play with Katatonia and Devin Townsend so far?
Really good… We’ve known Katatonia from before the tour and Devin is a really sweet guy. So yes, so far it has been really good.

For the fans coming to the concert, what can they expect? How will the set list look like?
For us it is always about the songs we will play. We’ve got 13 albums so we are going to try to do a cross-section of songs from each album. The festival set-list that we did this year worked pretty well in Europe so we are going to probably do that for this [tour].

You guys have released “Tragic Idol” back in April this year. I’m pretty sure that when you released it you were “in love with it”. Are you still “in love with it”?
Yeah. Each album represents who you are as a band. We still like each album on its own merit because it was where we were at that time.

We don’t really look at things in retrospect, we don’t think: “We should have changed this or changed that”. At that time, that was what felt right and that’s kind of “there”. So yeah, we still think it is a great album.

How are the fans reacting to the new songs live?
Really great. I mean, they go down as well as the older material. It is a good sign you know? It is good to do an album that people like as mu
interview Paradise Lostch as the previous materials. So, yes, it works well.

About the album: the title was inspired on how we idolize some people and how they start feeling some type of superiority for that, which makes them ugly in the inside. Is this correct?
Humm… it is more about people’s perceptions of how they put people into pedestals when they are really fragile as anybody else is. Just because someone is rich or kind of successful financially, it doesn’t really change that they are going to get ill, that they could be targeted by horrible diseases the same as anyone is. It is just about how fame is kind of like a mask released: people are no different to anybody else really.

There are artists that I admire but I’ve never got into the whole, hero thing about bands. It has never been my thing.

So, it is pretty much about [how] fame is kind of distorted way out of proportion to the media. Hollywood, kind of more than anywhere else…

Do you still see this “idolization” happening in the metal world?
Not so much in metal these days. No… it is not like it was in the 80’s. Definitely not... It is a lot more grounded now with the internet. It is very rare, maybe to a couple of bands [only].

You have released a video for this album: Honesty in Death. How close did you work with the producer of the video?
Humm… not all that close. We just gave him a list of feelings we like and he kind of took it from that really. We just wanted to be really miserable, really.

As long as they are on the same page as you, it works out pretty well. You just want to make sure of exactly what you want because a lot of times, the directors, they don’t get it…especially when they are not into metal music.

In more than 20 years, you guys have experimented a lot within your music. With all the
interview Paradise Lost changes you did to it, have you left many “orphans” behind every time you moved on or have most of your fans followed you throughout your different phases?
I think that people kind of followed us, really. There is not one specific album that everyone feels they are going to hear every time. No, people have followed us pretty well. Around 2000 it was a little bit down, but… yeah, I’ve never felt the need to lean on one particular period of our career.

So, most fans have been following you guys throughout the changes?
Yeah, they kind of grown with us, you know? Not everybody but, as you grow older you kind of grow in and out of things anyway and music is not different. You change all the time and 25 years [time the band has been together] is a long time, so…

Many of your metal fans are probably really happy with your last few releases, since they have been heavier. What kind of feedback are you getting from the metal media? Have they been as receptive as the fans have been?
Yeah… we’ve come from that background anyway. Generally speaking, reviews definitely picked up a lot in the last couple of years, yeah.

Talking about the future now: what are the plans for the rest of the year, besides playing on Barge to Hell? What about 2013?
We are going to do, probably, some South American shows, hopefully. We will do a European tour after this [tour]. So, we will be busy until Christmas and then I don’t know… we’ll see. We did a lot of work this year…

Any messages to the SOM readers?
Check out Paradise Lost, we are the cockroaches of heavy metal! You have to freeze us and if that doesn’t work you have to cut our heads off to get rid of us (laughs). No…

Check [Paradise Lost] out and come see us at a town near you. Check out Tragic Idol!
r>
Interview done by Deesse_de_la_nuit

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