PARADISE LOST Draconian Times CD (1995)

There are records that define a genre and then there are records that close a chapter. Draconian Times did both, arriving in 1995 just as gothic metal was finding its voice and immediately setting a standard most bands are still falling short of thirty years later.

Paradise Lost's sixth album is the one that stripped away the last of the death metal grit and committed fully to something slower, heavier in feel than in tempo, and genuinely heartbroken. Nick Holmes sounds like a man who has run out of arguments with the dark, and the guitars, huge and melodic without ever softening the blow, build a cathedral out of grief. Tracks like "The Last Time" and "Forever Failure" are not songs you listen to casually. They are songs you find yourself listening to on a Sunday afternoon when it's raining and you've stopped fighting it. Essential gothic metal. The kind of album that made an entire generation of Australians feel less alone in the back of a town that didn't understand them.

Format: CD, full length album. Released 1995. Country of origin: UK. Genre: gothic metal, doom metal.

Fans of: Katatonia, My Dying Bride, Type O Negative, Samael, Candlemass.