Interview: Paradise Lost
Having a nugget of something in your head and then seeing it come to fruition and being a record was always the thing that excited me the most, and continues to do that.
Paradise Lost have just released their new album Ascension and it sees the British gothic metal legends in typically fine form with an album that is typified with the sheer grandeur and heaviness that Paradise Lost have made their own since their inception. Gavin Brown caught up with guitarist Gregor Mackintosh to talk about Ascension and its creation, live dates and producing, as well as delving into the history of Paradise Lost with tales of their classic Draconian Times album, touring with Ozzy and playing Donington.
E&D: Your new album Ascension has just been released. What have been some of the biggest influences on this album?
Gregor: The initial inspiration was kicked off by a re-recording of Icon, one of our older albums from 1993 and that kicked off the process, really, so the inspiration stemmed from that. It’s not 100% all that, but that’s where the spark came from. A good half of the album is directly influenced by, not the album per se, but the headspace that we were in between 92/93/94. The rhythm guitar tone, songwriting style, guitar playing style and the recording and relearning of that sparked and interested us to do revisit that kind of thing. Then, there’s some songs on the album that are diversified from that, and I couldn’t really tell you where the influence came from.
E&D: How was it looking back at Paradise Lost at that time?
Gregor: It was a couple of things. It’s not just Icon, it’s really Shades Of God as well, which I think is one of our most understated records. You fall between Gothic and Icon, which always get lots of mentions, and Shades Of God never really gets mentioned. I think it’s a really cool album. It was a bit of the music and headspace of that time. It’s also nostalgia from good memories. Shades Of God was our first time in a residential studio, first time having management, first time turning professional, and it was just a good laugh. We just have really good memories of that period, the artwork, the lyrics, everything surrounding this album leaned heavily into what we did at that time, which is, I guess, the heavy religious iconography metaphor styling that we used back then. We’ve done that again, so even with the colours of the cover, it’s that Baroque green, red, gold type thing, which makes you feel kind of autumnal, winter, Christmasy. It was a bit of that churchy, we used to call it. Is it churchy enough?
E&D: You produced the album. How was that experience?
Gregor: It wasn’t drastically different to what I’ve been doing for the last 10 years. Just take one person out of the mix, we didn’t really need another person there to say, can you get this sound when we knew how to get it ourselves? The only pressure for me was the name producer being put on me, you’re ultimately the one that delivers it, and therefore you’re the one they can call if it’s wrong or if there’s a mistake. But it was really well planned, really well demoed. I deliberately worked with Lawrence Mackrory, who mixed it beforehand on another project to sound out if it was going to work or not. So we were well prepared. You do hit little snags and one of them was the drummer, but apart from that, it went really smooth.
E&D: Do you want to do more producing in the future, not just for Paradise Lost but for other bands as well?
Gregor: If I could be on my own doing it, yes, but a big part of being a producer for other bands is being a diplomat. Diplomacy, social skills are a big part of it, and I don’t have any diplomacy or social skills. If they handed me stuff, or said, one person at a time will come in and we’ll do it, then maybe. I kind of enjoy it. I’m not bad at it, because I’ve done it for lots of years, and I know lots of little tricks and tools of the trade, but I’m not a people person.
E&D: You mentioned the drummer there. You’ve got a new drummer in Jeff Singer, although he doesn’t appear on the album. How has he fitted back into the band?
Gregor: Great. He was our drummer for quite a few years, going back a decade or two, and he was the first person we called when things didn’t work out with Guido, The reason he left the band in the first place was because he wasn’t married, didn’t have kids when he first joined Paradise Lost hen he got married, had three kids close together. It’s a good reason for leaving a band, you need to spend time with your new family. His kids are now older, and he has a successful career outside of music, but we knew he still want to keep his hand in, because he played with My Dying Bride in between. We called him, and he was made up. He wants to do it and he’s good for the morale of the band, because he’s really enthusiastic and it lightens the mood. Sometimes we need that because it’s the same four miserable guys who started from 1988 and sometimes it can get oppressive.
E&D: This album marks the longest gap between Paradise Lost albums. Was there a reason for that, or was it just the way things panned out?
Gregor: There’s a couple of reasons. One is, the pandemic took three years out of it really. Another reason was about three years ago, I had four or five songs written for this record. I just wasn’t feeling it. I just thought the songs weren’t up to scratch. They didn’t give me the chill I needed when I listened to them, so I just scrapped the whole lot and said, Look, I’m not feeling inspired. We’ll come back to it whenever some inspiration hits. Then when we did the Icon thing, that’s when it kind of clicked. We thought, Ah, right, okay, this is the kind of avenue we should be going down or it feels right to be going down at this time. So that’s what we did. You can never preempt these things. Sometimes you do get writers block. In our career, it’s the first proper writers block I’ve had where it was like, I need to stop writing because I’m just writing shit.
E&D: Was that due to the pandemic and having more time on your hands?
Gregor: I don’t know, it was just maybe second guessing yourself, yeah, having too much time on your hands, and trying too many ideas out, and there’s no cohesiveness. There’s no common thread. I’ve had writers block before, but this was a proper dead end. First time I’ve come across that, and it was quite scary at first. It’s like, is that the end of my career? Can I not write any more music now, but then I think you just have to wait for inspiration to hit. We’re in a fortunate position that we don’t have anyone on our backs saying, release an album now. Theg give us the courtesy and the leeway to be able to do it when it feels right.
E&D: Are you looking forward to your forthcoming tour with Messages and High Parasite and taking the music of Ascension to the live stage?
Gregor: Yeah, we haven’t played any songs from Ascension yet, and we’ve been out already gigging for the last four months, right since we delivered the album. We went to South America, Mexico, North America, then toured with King Diamond and festivals and so, because of that, we didn’t have time to go to a rehearsal room and rehearse these new songs like we will now.I’m excited to give them a hearing. I think some of them will lend themselves to the stage, probably even better than record, they really are made to be played live. Some songs, not so much, but that’s the nature of an album. With Jeff coming back, he’s given us a fresh insight into the set, and he gave us a few suggestions, which we’ve taken on board, and we’re going to really switch up the set quite a lot from what we’ve played over the last couple of years. We’re going to put five or six different songs from throughout our career in that we haven’t played in a long time, a few classics still in and then some new songs. So it’s going to be quite a different set to the stuff that we played over the last couple of years.
E&D: How did that recent tour with King Diamond go?
Gregor: I was trepidatious about it. I was a fan of the Mercyful Fate stuff. Not so much the King Diamond stuff personally. It was just a too theatrical for me, a bit over the top, but a couple of guys in the band, Nick especially were big fans of the first two or three King Diamond albums. I shouldn’t have worried, because it was plain sailing. The audiences in some places took a bit to warm up, which is normal when you’re supporting someone, especially someone with such a history and such a big stage set. That was another thing that kind of made me think, how do you support something like that when it’s so theatrical, such a big stage there, but it was great. I think it was testament to the band themselves. King was great, really nice guy. Andy Laroque too, I’m not into widdly guitar people, but he’s a tasty guitarist, and I’ve long admired him and he was a lovely guy, so the whole band made it really easy for us. So it was good,
E&D: Who else have you loved touring with over the years?
Gregor: A lot of them have been bucket list ones. Initially it was, Oh, I really hope we get to play with Ozzy or Sabbath. And in the mid 90s, we got to play a whole tour with Ozzy, it was awesome, and we’ve played with Sabbath a few times. So that was one big thing. Then Sisters of Mercy was a big one. We did a full tour with Sisters of Mercy in 98/99. Trouble. I’ve always been obsessed with Trouble. They were a huge impact on me, and earlier this year, they supported us in America, which kind of blew me away. When they opened up the first night, I was stood at the side of the stage, and I felt like a thirteen year old again. I was just in rapture! So, yeah, there’s been a lot of moments where I’ve pinched myself playing with someone who who I’ve been a huge fan of. There’s not many left. I’d love to play with Dead Can Dance, but that’s a complete juxtaposition in style. Maybe it wouldn’t go down too well, but it’s just something I’d like to do personally.
E&D: Do you still look forward to and enjoy touring, this far into the band’s career, having done it for so long?
Gregor: Yeah, because each night is different, it’s always different. Certain things happen, good or bad within a day that make things memorable, and you can never really get bored of traveling around. I mean, the travel is boring. Flying is boring. I do get sick of airports, but actually seeing places and being different places is great. Meeting different people. I’m a bit of a loner, though. I’m not a social butterfly, so I’m very selective about how and when I hang out at these places, but yeah, I still enjoy it. The performing side is not the side that I got into this for though. It’s the creative side. Some guys in the band live for the performing side. For me personally, it’s having a nugget of something in your head and then seeing it come to fruition and being a record was always the thing that excited me the most, and continues to do that. But the performance side, it has its highs and lows.
E&D: Do you still get a thrill like holding a new Paradise Lost album in your hand?
Gregor: Well, I haven’t held the new one in my hand yet. I’ve only seen the unboxing when it went up. So I saw, at the same time as anyone on the internet. I’d seen mock ups by done by the the graphic designer, but I saw the finished thing and I saw the unbox. I’m like, wow, this is classy as fuck. This is exactly how I envisaged it. I do get excited to see how the whole package has come together, because growing up with music, you save up for a record, you go and buy a record. You’re invested in it. You stare at the cover and listen to the music at the same time, trying to draw parallels. You look at the picture of the band, wondering what they’re like. I’m still a bit like it when we’re making a record. I’m not sure how relevant it is these days. A lot of people just hit shuffle. Don’t even look at the artwork. They don’t care about track listing. But to us, it’s very important how an album ebbs and flows. What’s the start of the B side? How the artwork translates? Can you look at it and listen to the music and draw parallels, and how the whole thing ties together? It’s a big thing for us, regardless of how relevant it is. In 2025.
E&D: 2025 marks thirty years since the release of Draconian Times, are you doing anything to mark that anniversary?
Gregor: I didn’t even know it was thirty years since Draconian Times til you just said! No, we did a twenty five year anniversary of Draconian Times, where we played the album in its entirety. We did a few shows, and I believe it was when we took out My Dying Bride and Anathema. It was great. Anathema are gone now and My Dying Bride are more or less in a transition period, so I don’t think we can top that as far as something like that goes. The only reason we did the Icon re-recording was because it’s the only record in our discography that we found out we don’t own, someone else owns it. Sony, I think and they wouldn’t let us reproduce the artwork or music so we had to kind of do a homage to it. The re-recording is an homage, and it’s very much, if you like this, go and get the real version, because that’s what it was meant to be. It was a moment in time. I always make a point of saying that albums are a snapshot of a band in a moment in time, and that’s what should be the real product. You know, re-recording is fine, but they’re just to point someone in a direction.
E&D: Do you look back on that Draconian Times period fondly?
Gregor: It was a very debauched period of the band’s history. So many memories I have of it are very blurred because we were constantly drunk. Your mid 20s, your careers snowballing. People are feeding you all kinds of bullshit about how you’re going to be the next Metallica and stuff. Your head starts to spin a bit. You’re on tour constantly. I mean, from recording Icon to the last gig of the Draconian Times tour. We were home a few days Three years away from home, constantly drinking, constantly believing this bullshit. I’m getting bored of it at the same time, so yeah, I have great, blurred memories of the recording of it, because Simon Efemy who produced it, he’s a real laugh. He continues to be a real laugh. I saw him only two or three weeks ago. I bumped into him by random in Schiphol Airport, in the lounge. He was there with Napalm Death. He’s doing Napalm’s live sound, and he’s exactly the same as he was when we did Draconian Times. I said, How old are you now, Simon? He said, 65 I said, fucking hell, I didn’t even know how old you were. You were ten years older than us, you don’t act it. He says, well I can still get hard on! That’s exactly what he’s like. That sums him up in a sentence, He’s just such a good laugh, and he made the recording of those three albums, Shades Of God, Icon and Draconian Times, just a blast, just a sheer joy to do really, and it’s a great time to reminisce about.
E&D: Paradise Lost played Donington 96 in support of Draconian Times too, what are your memories of that day?
Gregor: It feels like it was almost at the pinnacle of it, because it feels like a culmination doing that. There was a lot of pressure on, it was the last ever Donington, and then it was reimagined as Download. It was an iconic thing to do. It’s another one of those bucket list things, and it was a real high point in metal history. I guess the scene was really alive at the time, with lots of new things. I remember Music For Nations had blown a huge budget on various things. Backstage, we had our own tent that, and even the catering was black. There were black cakes, black sandwiches! I’m not sure if it worked as a marketing tool. I’ve no idea, but it was fun to talk about and fun to see. The gig was awesome. I remember we had a real good time doing it, and the crowd were great. I remember, there was a second stage at the time with up and coming bands and Korn were on it. It’s a well known thing now, because Nick said in the press about it a few times, and I think it was in an MTV interview, while Korn were playing, they asked me about them, and I said, it’ll never catch on. I’ll eat me hat if that gets big, yeah, I devoured that hat wholeheartedly!
E&D: It was a great day, I was there as a teenager and it was so hot that day!
Gregor: Oh you were there? Yeah, It was a hot day. Recently someone played back the Headbangers Ball footage of us, from the day, and it was interesting to watch back. To see yourself at a certain point in time.
E&D: We’re you tipped to play Donington the year before in 95, with Draconian Times being fresh out?
Gregor: Yeah, I think the year before. It’s just logistics. You’re either in the country or you’re not in the country. I think it was a bit of that, we may have been asked and we weren’t around, or a deal wasn’t worked out. I don’t know, at that point, we detached ourselves from any of the booking, any of the business side of it. With Shades Of God, that’s when we went professional, because we literally couldn’t hold down jobs anymore because we were away too much. It’s a big step, because you’re not really earning enough to make a living at that point, so you have to really make a sacrifice, and you get a manager, and the manager takes over that side of it, and there’s a lot of trust involved. Obviously, I’m glad we did it, but it’s a big step at the time. It’s not for the faint of heart to try and do. It’s one of those things, do you do it, or don’t you do it? Because it could go sideways. But, yeah, we still have the same management, same four guys in the band, so we must have done something right.
