Eleven months ago, I caught up with Paradise Lost vocalist Nick Holmes as the band prepared to release their seventeenth studio album, Ascension. Before we wrapped up that conversation, Nick told me Paradise Lost 100 percent wanted to return to Australia.
Now, the time has finally arrived.
Paradise Lost will return this October for their first Australian shows in nearly a decade, bringing almost forty years of death doom, gothic metal, darkness and glorious misery to Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.
There could not be a better time to welcome Nick back to Crannk. Ascension has now been unleashed upon the world, Paradise Lost have spent months testing the new material on stages across Europe and the revolutionary Gothic has reached its 35th anniversary.
I was only eleven years old when Gothic was released, so I did not experience the album properly when it first arrived. Hearing it now, though, it remains revolutionary, epic and completely timeless. In my opinion, it is an absolute masterpiece that set the benchmark for generations of doom and gothic metal bands that followed.
This second conversation gave us an opportunity to look forward to the Australian tour while also heading back into the formative years of Paradise Lost, exploring the collision of influences that created Gothic, the human imperfections hidden inside the album and why doom can make so many of us feel bloody good.
From Motörhead to Paradise Lost
Before we stepped into the current chapter, I wanted to take Nick back to the first heavy song that truly grabbed his attention.
Nick was around ten or eleven when Motörhead’s “Ace of Spades” changed everything. Rainbow may have also played a part through songs such as “All Night Long” or “I Surrender”, but it was heavy music that first made him want to search for more.
There was nothing before it that connected with him in quite the same way. Once those heavier sounds raised his ears, the path ahead had begun to take shape.
Decades later, that first spark remains alive within a band that has continually changed its surroundings without losing the darkness at its core.
Paradise Lost Finally Return to Australia
Paradise Lost last visited Australia in 2017. Nick admitted that the speed at which those years disappeared is difficult to comprehend.
“It’s brilliant,” he said of the band’s return. “Like you said, ten years, I can’t believe how fast that’s gone. That is insane.”
Earlier Australian visits gave Paradise Lost more time to explore and enjoy the country. Touring budgets and schedules now mean bands often fly in, perform and move straight onto the next destination.
Nick wishes Paradise Lost had more time here, but there is no question about how much the band is looking forward to returning.
“I just wish we had more time there again, but we will certainly enjoy the time that we do have there.”
Australian audiences will finally have an opportunity to experience material from both Obsidian and Ascension, alongside songs reaching across a catalogue of seventeen studio albums.
Turning Seventeen Albums Into One Set
Describing the Australian performances as career spanning creates one immediate problem. How do you represent nearly forty years of Paradise Lost without keeping everyone inside the venue for six hours?
The band has spent the past year working through different songs and learning which ones connect most powerfully in a live setting. Their current festival set has provided a solid foundation, while three or four songs from Ascension are likely to make their way into the Australian shows.
There may also be room for several deeper cuts.
Paradise Lost regularly asks listeners what they want to hear, and Nick believes the band and its audience generally land in a similar place. Of course, somebody will always leave disappointed that their favourite song did not make the final set.
As Nick put it, that is simply life when you have seventeen albums behind you.
Joining Paradise Lost across all three Australian dates will be Victoria K. I interviewed Victoria a few years ago and know what an incredible vocalist she is. After recently bringing gothic metal onto The Voice Australia, she feels like a perfect addition to these shows.
Nick had already been sent some of Victoria K’s music and agreed that Australian audiences are in for something special.
“She’s a great singer,” he said. “Really good.”
Why Doom Makes Us Feel Better
Paradise Lost have always confronted grief, mortality, despair and the darker corners of life. For those looking in from the outside, it may be difficult to understand how music built from such bleak emotions can provide comfort.
For the rest of us, it makes perfect sense.
Paradise Lost can give shape to emotions we may struggle to express ourselves. The music does not necessarily drag us further into the darkness. It allows us to face it, live within it for a while and emerge feeling less alone.
Nick connects that experience to the horror films he loved while growing up. Dark cinema made him feel something powerful, and heavy metal became an extension of that same form of escapism.
“Happy songs make me feel sad,” Nick explained. “I find that way more depressing than I would do listening to a Candlemass album or something.”
Rather than viewing Paradise Lost albums as traditional stories, Nick approaches the music as a way of capturing a feeling.
“Not so much storytelling, it’s just about trying to capture a feeling.”
A particular part of a song can still make him cry when he is in the right frame of mind. It is not necessarily a response to something real or autobiographical. Like becoming emotionally invested in a film, it is the result of allowing music to pull you outside everyday life and into another world.
When everything lands correctly, the music simply takes you somewhere else.
How Gothic Fused Different Worlds
Paradise Lost released Gothic in 1991, but its atmosphere continues to feel almost impossible to trap within that period.
Nick traced its foundations back to the different musical worlds the band was absorbing. Trouble and Candlemass were enormous early influences, while Paradise Lost also loved the original death metal bands.
At the same time, they were becoming fascinated with The Sisters of Mercy.
The Sisters of Mercy were not metal, but their music carried the darkness and atmosphere Paradise Lost wanted to capture. Greg Mackintosh brought that gothic character into his guitar work, while Nick placed what he described as his “berserk death metal vocals” over the top.
Those elements were not expected to exist together.
Paradise Lost did not begin with a grand plan to create a new movement. They took the sounds that excited them and fused them into something that felt natural. The result was Gothic.
That collision created a language countless bands would eventually draw from, but Paradise Lost were still young musicians following their instincts and exploring territory that did not have clearly defined boundaries.
Slowing Down in Front of Hardcore Crowds
The early Paradise Lost did not have an established gothic metal circuit waiting to welcome them.
They regularly shared small punk and hardcore venues with bands such as Extreme Noise Terror and Napalm Death. Mainstream metal bills offered little space for music like theirs, so the more extreme ends of punk and metal became natural allies.
Nick remembers those years with enormous affection.
Planet X in Liverpool stands out as one of the venues from that period. Anathema also started playing there, and those small clubs gave bands creating darker and more extreme music somewhere to develop.
Paradise Lost were the slow band surrounded by speed. If an impatient audience wanted them to play faster, Greg was just as likely to slow things down even further.
Those shows may have confused people at the time, but they also helped Paradise Lost become unlike anybody else.
When an Album Outgrows Its Own Name
The word Gothic eventually became much larger than the album itself.
Nick compared it to the relationship between Venom and black metal. Younger listeners hearing the words “black metal” may not immediately think of Venom, even though the band played a crucial role in giving the movement its name.
Gothic metal has undergone a similar transformation.
Depending on someone’s age or location, the term may now bring an entirely different band or sound to mind. Nick suggested that an American listener might associate gothic metal with Evanescence long before Paradise Lost.
Paradise Lost originally arrived at the description by combining two things they enjoyed: goth music and metal. After almost forty years of evolution, Nick no longer feels any need to force the band into one particular category.
The name may have escaped their control, but the album that helped establish it still sounds like nothing else.
The Human Element Inside “Rapture”
One of the greatest stories surrounding Gothic involves the explosion heard during “Rapture”.
The sound was reportedly added to cover a drum fill that was not landing properly. What began as an improvised studio repair became permanently embedded within one of the most important albums in death doom and gothic metal.
Nick had completely forgotten the story until I mentioned it.
“The nuclear explosion over the drum fill, I’d completely forgotten about that,” he laughed. “It’s not a very impressive nuclear explosion either, is it? It’s like a kind of crap firework.”
It may not be the most convincing nuclear explosion ever recorded, but the song would now feel incomplete without it.
Modern recording technology allows musicians and producers to correct almost anything. Timing can be tightened, mistakes removed and every rough edge polished away. Nick believes it is possible to take that process too far.
Older albums often speed up, slow down and contain mistakes. Once those imperfections become part of a record, they can also become part of what listeners love about it.
“It’s the human element, I guess.”
That human element is one of the reasons Gothic remains so powerful. It does not sound like an album constructed through a perfect formula. It sounds like young musicians discovering something new while the tape was rolling.
The 35th anniversary edition of Gothic preserves that character through newly remastered audio by Jaime Gomez Arellano. The double CD also includes a 1991 performance from Ludwigsburg, capturing Paradise Lost before decades of history gathered around the album.
Still Finding The Joy After Almost Forty Years
Paradise Lost formed in Halifax in 1988, with Nick Holmes, Greg Mackintosh, Aaron Aedy and Steve Edmondson remaining at the heart of the band ever since.
Nearly forty years together has created an understanding that no meeting or carefully written band agreement could replicate.
Nick believes part of surviving that long is knowing when to push someone’s buttons and when to leave them alone. It also helps that the friendships underneath Paradise Lost have not become too serious.
“We still have a sense of humour. We laugh at the same stuff. We’re still incredibly childish in many ways.”
Experience brings a greater understanding of consequences, but Nick does not believe people completely leave their teenage selves behind. They simply have more life thrown at them.
Even many of the disasters that once felt overwhelming have eventually become funny stories. Unless something is genuinely serious, Nick now tries to look ahead and ask whether it will really matter in an hour, a year or somewhere further down the road.
Paradise Lost have also regained control of the masters for In Requiem, Faith Divides Us – Death Unites Us, Tragic Idol and The Plague Within.
For Nick, there is another simple lesson hidden in that achievement: remain together long enough and you might eventually get your music back.
“If you stick around long enough, you can have the luck of getting that back,” he said. “You’re just going to stick around for forty or fifty years before you get that privilege. When we’re 110 years old, we might own everything.”
The Misery Is Coming Back Down Under
Paradise Lost have never relied on one chapter of their history.
The band that created Gothic through instinct, contrasting influences and studio imperfections eventually became the band capable of producing an album as vast and assured as Ascension. Through every change in sound, Nick’s voice, Greg’s unmistakable guitar melodies and that deep understanding between the founding members have kept Paradise Lost recognisable.
Now Australian audiences will finally experience the latest stage of that journey.
Paradise Lost’s Ascension is out now through Nuclear Blast Records. The 35th anniversary edition of Gothic is available through Peaceville.
Paradise Lost return to Australia this October with special guests Victoria K:
Sunday 18 October 2026
The Triffid, Brisbane
Monday 19 October 2026
Factory Theatre, Sydney
Tuesday 20 October 2026
Max Watt’s, Melbourne
General admission tickets and limited meet and greet VIP packages are available through DRW Entertainment.
Watch the complete interview above as Nick Holmes discusses the band’s Australian return, building a setlist from seventeen albums, the horror films behind the darkness of Paradise Lost, the birth of Gothic, the beauty of musical imperfections and the friendships that have carried the band for almost forty years.
