Not "just" the Ember's Fire of Dark Atmospheric Rock...

Review Score: (10/10)
When I got ICON in 1994 from Vanessa Warwick at Headbanger's Ball Festival, Germany, and later listened to it, I could not really find an entrance to this gigantic artwork of Paradise Lost instantly or at once. In the beginning of my personal "Icon-Experience", to my mind it sounded strange, unconventionally, uneasy to listen to and even more problematic to understand it's meaning and message - talking about both: the lyrics and the sound. But what goes for all great or major artwork - that the later by us most appreciated things, do not please us normally "at first sight" - also applies to Paradise Lost's ICON album: access to its very own idea, to its specific point of worldview, we might say, and to its "sense" can only be gained by opening oneself to it totally, by letting the music flow into our mind and soul, filling us totally, until we - eventually - become the music ourselves. This happened in my mind, and then I understood, then I have seen, and the words - both: the lyrical and the musical - became meaning to me, shaping, rendering and changing the emotional aspects of my spirit, and rewarding with a new, a different view of what (according to my own reality) is. In accordance to this, the Icon-experience can even be a "religious", or better: a mystical, metaphysic experience to the one who listens carefully with his whole existence to this magnificent tunes, that swallow everything; it may also set free new horizons - like leaving one shore (which is the one of our average experience) and reaching another one (different, maybe "higher" in a way): the expansion and enlargement of our awareness and consciousness. What can there be else to say about? Well, it's the first and only CD that I'd take on this "lonely island" - if I would have only one choice.

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