I’ve been a fan of Paradise Lost for absolutely ages, but due to one thing or another, I’ve always missed out on seeing them. However, 2018 was finally my lucky year and after a chilled out day of pottering about round Glasgow, it was time for the show to start.
Openers King Goat got the evening off to a powerful start. Playing their own brand of progressive doom, there was a good chunky heaviness to their sound with a nice peppering of melody from the vocals – and speaking of which, vocalist Trim had a great versatile approach to his performance, giving both growled and clean vocals to a very high standard. Indeed, the set as a whole was of a high standard, with a lot of atmosphere, and they were so tight and together. Although they only had a short set, they really made it count, and the new material sounded excellent – I for one can’t wait for their upcoming album Debt of Aeons.
Following band Outshine kept the pace going nicely. Although suffering with feedback problems throughout the set, it was still a decent performance and their songs packed a real punch. There was a lot of passion from the fourpiece throughout, and it was a joy to watch them put their absolute all into what they did. The set contained both older and newer material, but admittedly the newer stuff from their recently released album 1313 had that extra sparkle. Definitely an album worth checking out!
Of course, the night always belonged to Paradise Lost. Riding high on the release of their fifteenth album Medusa, the set featured a decent amount of tracks from it whilst also visiting many albums from their extensive back-catalogue. It was a good mix of old and new, with the set flowing fantastically from one song to the next. Blood And Chaos was a definite highlight – whilst it is good on CD, in a live environment it just had an extra kick and the energy to it was tremendous. Another great inclusion was Erased, which got a massive response with plenty of people singing along!
There was only one real problem that night, and that was the temperature of the venue – frontman Holmes joked at one point that we should all bugger off to the Wetherspoons a few doors down to have the gig there because it would probably be warmer there. It didn’t really warm up at all over the course of the night, even with all the movement from the crowd (the floor was even shaking during the final song Say Just Words due to everyone jumping up and down!) but if that’s the only complaint about an otherwise great show, it shows what a top-notch night it was.
As a whole, the gig was great. There was a fantastic atmosphere throughout and the crowd was really perceptive, so it was a pleasure to be a part of the night and finally see one of my favourite bands live. Now…the countdown begins to their set at Dark Easter Metal Meeting in a month’s time!
