Paradise Lost: Host (1999)


Holy shit, long time fans of Paradise Lost are going to have a fit when they hear this album. WOW....gone is all the heavy metal sound to the music and its replaced by techno sounding material. Approach this with a very open mind and you may end up loving this like I do. The closest sound to metal on this disc would be "Behind The Grey" which is reminiscent of something off One Second. The rest is music you can dance to however, the guitars are still there, they are just used very sparingly. Overall, though, I think Paradise Lost made a logical progression with this album. Draconian Times showed the band further evolving from death metal, One Second was your warning that Paradise Lost has found a new sound and Host is their new sound. The atmospherics on this CD are great though....Nick Holmes sounds amazing- he sounds very spooky and depressing. "So Much is Lost" opens the album and is also the first single and is very dance oriented but a very good song with intense lyrics. Other standouts are "Ordinary Days" (which reminds me a little of "One Second"- the song), "In All Honesty" which is probably the most upbeat song PL has done outdoing "The Last Time". "Year Of Summer" is the song that made me buy Host- this a very dark song with elements of hard rock in it and the title track is very cool- its a slower song with cool lyrics and cool orchestration in the mid-section. The bonus tracks on the Japanese version I have are "So Much Is Lost (Lost In Space Mix)" which is cool but way too techno- many loops and samples, "Languish" which could be a continuation of the "Lost In Space Mix"....no vocals except for a very faint sounding chant that sounds like "they want to fuck me" and "So Much Is Lost (String Version)" which sounds way too much like the original version but with strings thrown it although the strings don't very much fit. Great effort and I'm curious to see where the band goes from here.