Paradise Lost

Draconian Times

Monumental Melancholic Metal.

Review Score:

(10/10)
Its about time I wrote a Paradise Lost review, they've been my favourite band for nine years.
Draconian Times is an album demonstrating metal of the heaviest and darkest order by the masters of their field. Paradise Lost are the fathers of dark and gothic-tinged metal.
Here, furious emotional vocals(Nick Holmes) are combined with masterful melancholic leads, melodies and riffs(Gregor Makintosh, Aaron Aedy), along with superb lively drumming(Lee Morris' first album with PL) and a nice grinding bass sound carrying the songs through(Steve Edmondson) to create a monumental landmark in metal. This is one of my very favourite albums of all time.
With it's established air of melancholia, fury and darkness, Draconian Times is, when analyzed, very diverse.
Some songs on here are very thrashy, such as "Hallowed Land", "Once Solemn" and "Yearn For Change", the latter of which is coupled with acoustic bridges and brilliant lead lines. On the other hand you can hear Paradise Lost in their specialist field, that of sadness, beauty and abyssal moodiness. This is best demonstrated by "Enchantment", "Forever Failure" "Shades of God" and "Jaded". These songs possess the slowest leads andthe most furious of vocal lines. Some songs have a rather more typical song-structure approach, such as "The Last Time", "I See Your Face" and "Shadowkings", with touches of brilliance particularly adundant on the latter. "Hands of Reason" posseses a song-structure rather similar to that of "True Belief" from Icon, and "Elusive Cure" is a brilliant work of clean melodies with a unique song structure and a very nice bassline.
Such a number of styles of heaviness and sadness fused and intertwined make for the greatest tale of sadness ever told.
Its a shame this album neve quite got the recognition it derserved, maybe one day it will.
My favourite songs here are "Jaded", "Enchantment" and "Elusive Cure".
Many would recommend this album along with Icon, it's predecessor, however these two are very similiar in approach and style. I would recommend Draconian Times with either One Second or Host, so to demonstrate to the listener the great diversification and evolution of the greatest band ever to grace the earth.
Perfect for sunsets, sunrises and dark, gloomy days.

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