af Michael Meier

At det genrehoppende doommetal/synthrock/gothmetal Paradise Lost har en del år på bagen kunne ses på aftenens publikum, hvor der var flere sort- og nitteklædte mennesker i slut 30′erne og 40′erne end jeg nogensinde har set på The Rock. Blandt The Rocks sorte, grå guld fik jeg endelig set Paradise Lost live med udmærkede opvarmningsbands som plus og en basglad lydmand som minus.

Dørene på the Rock åbnedes med 15 minutters forsinkelse, da lydprøverne med aftenens bands trak ud. Aner ikke, hvad de brugte den ekstra tid til. En sidemand i køen gættede på onani. Et udmærket bud.

Ghost Brigade

Ghost Brigade

Første opvarmingsband var finske Ghost Brigade, som spillede en blanding af melo-død, metalcore (tænk: Killswitch Engage) og den der diffuse posthardcore/sludge-genre, som også Isis og Cult of Luna bevæger sig i. De trak i lyden både på svensk tradition for groove og den finske melankolske dødsmetal.

Det samlede indtryk for alle disse indflydelser og afstikkere, samt de hvirvlende guitarer, blandingen mellem poppet skønsang og dødsgrowl, samt bandets gadenære fremtoning, vakte hos denne anmelder sjovt nok især mindelser om Deftones.

Der var god dynamik i musikken og numrene var ørehængende og medrivende med god dynamik og variation. Ghost Brigade gjorde det godt og overraskede positivt i den kun ½ time som ukendt opvarmningsband en tirsdag aften.

Samael

Samael

Aftenens nummer to var Samael, som entrede scenen og beviste, at man godt kan se virkeligt onde ud uden nitter og corpsepaint. Deres industrialiserede black metal var også lige så skarptskårent og trimmet som forsangeren og trommeslagerens fipskæg.

Det var dog black metal i den efter min mening gode ende, hvor der inde bag støjen kunne spores antræk til rock n’ roll og fucking metal. Jeg mener dog, at have hørt et sted at Samael skulle høre til den mere eksperimenterende del af black metal genren. Hvis det betyder, at de skifter mellem elektroniske trommer og ‘rigtige’ trommer, så check, og hvis det betyder at de har skrevet i al fald et til koncerten spillet nummer med den mest irriterende billige keyboardlyd nogensinde, så check.

Et nummer fremstod dog overordentligt fedt med det gentagne, fængende råb-med omkvæd: “Damnation Generation”, som fik gang i djævlehorn og publikum. Publikum (inkl. anmelderen) virkede dog utålmodige efter at komme videre til Paradise Lost, men bandet fremstod professionelt og erfarent og kørte et show af på trods af den svingende modtagelse.

Der blev (ifølge bandet selv) spillet sange fra hele bandets bagkatalog, som jeg dog ikke kendte videre til, da jeg sidst forsøgte mig med at høre Samael for flere år siden, uden at det hang ved. Samael spillede 1 time, og gik af scenen uden ekstranumre. De kunne nok selv fornemme, at det var hovednavnet Paradise Lost størstedelen var kommet for at se.

Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost

Kl. 23.30 gik Paradise Lost endelig på. Paradise Lost er et af mine yndlingsbands, som siden deres dannelse i start 90′erne har bevæget sig fra at være blandt gotisk doommetals grundlæggere forbi eventyr i Depeche Mode-agtig synthrock og tilbage til tungere genrer igen.

Jeg nåede lige at klappe i mine små heltetilbedende hænder ved deres fremkomst, så blev jeg væltet omkuld af deres wall of sound og åbningsnummeret Pity the Sadness. Hvor opvarmningsbandsene var sluppet hæderligt fra lyden, så havde Paradise Lost åbenbart indstillet sig på stadionkoncertens støjniveau. De fyre der stod foran mig til koncerten jokede med at bandet var bitre over den lille scene (hvad enkelte sidekommentarer fra forsanger Nick Holmes da også kunne tyde på), så muligvis prøvede de at kompensere.

Pga. det irriterende lydniveau forsvandt mange numre i bas og larm. Måske derfor var det først sent i koncerten og især ved de 3 ekstranumre at en lille sejr blev kørt hjem. Ekstranumrene var dog også velvalgte: den nye single ‘Faith divides us, death unites us’, klassikeren ‘The Last Time’ fra Draconian Times og ikke mindst allersidste (og koncertens bedste) nummer ‘Say just words’ fra One Second, som alt for sent fik koncerten helt op at ringe. Faktisk var det største højdepunkt uden for ovennævnte numre også titelnummeret fra One Second, hvor lyden begyndte at fungere bedre (bassen var stadig lidt for tung), mens Holmes stemme holdt nummeret igennem. Der blev headbanget og sunget igennem.

Især forsanger Nick Holmes var ikke særlig veloplagt. Kontakten til publikum virkede halvhjertet og man fornemmede at han kørte showet hjem på rutinen – her vil jeg dog give ham point for professionalisme om ikke andet. Stemmen virkede også slidt i flere numre. Den manglende entusiasme kan dog ligeså vel tirsdagens og publikums skyld. Måske var det gennemsnitsalderen, måske var det dagen. Man var på trods af spredt optakt til fest ikke i tvivl om, at det var hverdagsaften – anmelderen skulle også selv tidligt op onsdag morgen.

Det blev dog til godt og vel 1 time og 15 min. koncert, hvor bandet spillede et bredt udsnit af det meget varierede bagkatalog. Vi fik derfor både tung doom og synthrock, gamle og nye numre. Det kan undre denne anmelder, at vi ikke fik et eneste nummer fra Paradise Lost’ selvbetitlede album fra 2005, som tilfældigvis er en personlig favorit. Stort minus der. Hvis det ikke var for de afsluttende højdepunkter havde det været en skuffende koncert, nu er den lige godkendt som middelmådig til udmærket.

Paradise Lost Setlist:
1. Pity the Sadness // 2. Erased // 3. I Remain // 4. As I Die // 5. The Enemy // 6. First Light // 7. Enchantment // 8. Frailty // 9. One Second // 10. No Celebration // 11. Requiem // 12. Faith Divides Us, Death Unites us // 13. The Last Time // 14. Say Just Words.

I woke up in one of the White Hart’s comfortable rooms, early brightness offering some hope that this would be a good walking day. Chalfont St Giles being the home of John Milton, I read some Paradise Lost while I waited for breakfast time. I hadn’t looked at this poem for years – not since ‘Rusty’ Reynolds taught it at A-level, at least when we weren’t able to distract him into talking about cricket, jazz or Bob Dylan. (A happy memory – VIth form huts at the back of Hove Grammar School as lost paradise…) I became steadily more wide-eyed as I read through Books 1 and 2 – soaking in the language of a potent supermyth; I often read comics, pulp and fantasy, to the point where I’m jaded from a surfeit of marvels, but this stuff… has me babbling with inarticulate enthusiasm.

The pub breakfast was suitably hearty, though for some reason the three overnight guests were squashed into one corner of the restaurant. My fellow breakfasters were on some kind of public- or third-sector job-related trip, their language similar to my own work-speak but with different words – so much so that I couldn’t understand what they were saying. We all spoke ‘corporate’, but in different dialects.

I paid up and left. At the end of the bar, pink balloons, slightly deflated, were a residue of last night’s breast cancer fundraising dinner (£25 with a complimentary half-bottle of wine, £5 to the charity) – worthy resistance to the bodily effects of ‘Chaos…And Tumult and Confusion all imbroild’. Flashback to encountering the language of cancer – suddenly learning unwanted words like ‘metastasized’, treading uncertain territory of ‘percentages’ and ‘remission’.

A few hundred yards down the hill I passed Milton’s Cottage. I believe he wrote Paradise Lost here. I wondered if Edge Hill, a key battle of the English Civil War (the site of which I visited a few months ago) featured in his mental landscape. Opposite the cottage is ‘Milton’s Indian Restaurant’, where I checked out the menu – disappointed not to find dishes with Miltonian themes, a vindaloo maybe described as ‘a fiery Deluge, fed With ever-burning Sulphur unconsum’d (very spicy)’.

In Chalfont itself I overshot the path and wandered into the churchyard, walking out through the lich gate (better than being carried in) and picking up the South Bucks Way.

On a gloomy day in the rain I was braced for walking through a ‘dismal Situation waste and wilde’. It was somewhat grim with the strangled sounds of cattle and barking dogs blowing across the wet heath, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. Another tract of country, no beauty spot and no reason to come here except for the journey itself…

It was raining harder as I walked through Chalfont St Peter, and over a hill via long streets lined with big houses to Gerrards Cross. A Costa Coffee gave a brief respite, the warm tones of its corporate decor familiar from just about everywhere I’ve been. From there, really wet now, I walked across some parkland and out past the last houses, too busy plunging through the rain to wonder why the woods here are called ‘The Rancho’, a soggy echo of Spain or California.

Rancho: notorious?

In Fulmer I stopped for a pint in the Black Horse – Greene King ‘Fireside’ Bitter, a cheerful picture of a blazing hearth on the pump clip contrasting with the unlit fires in the pub itself. It was nice enough though for some reason I felt glad I hadn’t stayed there, as I had considered doing. From the pub I doubled back past the church, sounds of hymn singing emerging, today being the Festival of Christ the King, for many the last Sunday of the liturgical year – the expectant penitent waiting of Advent soon to start. I yearn for such spiritual structure but here I am out walking, again.

I joined the Beeches Way and soon crossed the M40, almost at its southernmost tip. I suppose I could have called this year ‘Walking the M40′ as I have more or less completed its length and recrossed it several times. I now feel that I ‘own’ it in a different way from the drivers and passengers.

Shortly afterwards I entered Black Park Country Park. This seems a clumsy title as its name is ‘Black Park’, and it’s a ‘Country Park’. Google simply conflate this into ‘Black Country Park’, implying that this stretch of wood and heath could really belong back in an earlier part of the walk, near Dudley, Stourbridge and Wolverhampton. A low sun appeared, gleaming through the dripping trees.

On the other side of Black Park, I found myself at the southern tip of Pinewood Studios. Rather than walk on, I decided to take a detour, making a complete circuit which will comprise a post of its own.

Another mile of wood and wintry sunshine, some muddy paths to the station, and the day’s walk was finished. Elsewhere, the rain I had enjoyed was washing bridges away, flooding homes. There were autumn leaves still unfallen on the branches, and also some spring green come unnaturally early; in a couple of weeks I would be 48, a year-and-a-day left to reach the 50th year where the endpoint of this journey should lie; a bit more time ‘treading the crude consistence’ of ill-defined territory, ‘bog or steep…strait, rough, dense, or rare’; pointing lenses into the sun, metastasizing words and pixels and unfolding fresh maps.

Ist natürlich meine Frau! Aber woher kommt eigentlich diese Redewendung?

Die scherzhafte Bezeichnung der Ehefrau als „bessere Hälfte“ stammt aus dem Schäferroman The countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (Das Arkadien der Gräfin von Pembroke) des englischen Dichters Philip Sidney.

Der Dichter John Milton griff diese Wendung in seinem Epos Paradise Lost (Das verlorene Paradies) wieder auf, indem er Adam seine Frau Eva als „dearer half“ als „teurere Hälfte“, bezeichnen lässt. [Wikipedia]

Întregul traseu de turneu în care era inclus şi Cluj-Napoca, şi care trebuia să se desfăşoare în luna decembrie 2009, a fost amânat pentru luna februarie.

Concertul de la Cluj (3 decembrie), amânat din cauza unor probleme apărute in interiorul formaţiei Paradise Lost, va fi reprogramat în perioada 10-20 februarie 2010.

Organizatorul local, Promusic Prod, menţionează faptul că persoanele care îşi păstrează biletele pentru noul concert vor primi cadou un afiş al concertului şi o revistă Maximum Rock Magazin.

La Rochefoucauld writes, “Le soleil ni la mort ne se peuvent regarder fixément”: “Neither the sun nor death can be stared at (looked at fixedly)” (Maxim 19, edition of 1678.)  In each case seeing would undo sight.  But impossibility is apt to be disregarded.  We may think of the peril of raising one’s eyes to the Sun King; or of a philosopher who, following Socrates, practices dying and being dead (Phaedo 64a), until he becomes unable to see life as others do.

The blindness or darkness that ensues in such cases has been represented as the condition of a castaway, one shipwrecked.  Thus the men of Odysseus appropriate the cattle of Helios Hyperion, the Sun that is Over, and having so raised their eyes to the god, they slay his beasts ὑπέρβιον, hyperbion, over-boldly (Odyssey 1.8, 12.379).  Demanding atonement, Helios threatens to go down to Hades and shine among the dead; to satisfy him Zeus blasts the men out of Odysseus’s ship with a thunderbolt and destroys it.  Their leader, who had condemned the sacrilege, is saved alone, to be carried all but helpless to Calypso’s island.  —What the god Odysseus offended (by proxy) would have done is to blind the living world and reveal the thinness of the one below.  By this the hero’s affinity with him is evident, for Odysseus too is a blinder—not only of the Cyclops, but of many men by his disguises, including the Trojan horse, and the cloak of his speech—and himself visits the dead, illuminating them but experiencing their emptiness.

Again, Milton’s Satan, “fraught / With envy against the Son of God,” (Paradise Lost 5.661) is cast “Thunder-struck” (6.858) with his followers into “a fiery Gulf” in “darkness visible,” (1.52, 63) from which he makes his way to land.  He resembles a sun darkened:

His form had not yet lost
All her Original brightness, nor appear’d
Less than Arch-Angel ruin’d, and th’ excess
Of Glory obscur’d: As when the Sun new ris’n
Looks through the Horizontal misty Air
Shorn of his Beams, or from behind the Moon
In dim Eclipse disastrous twilight sheds
On half the Nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes Monarchs.  Dark’n’d so, yet shone
Above them all th’ Arch-Angel: but his face
Deep scars of Thunder had intrencht…
(1.591)

At the gate of his new world Satan encounters Sin and “her black attendant Death” (7.547),

The other shape,
If shape it might be call’d that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb,
Or substance might be call’d that shadow seem’d,
For each seem’d either—black it stood as Night…
(2.666)

Death is unseeable, or unknowable, because it has no form; in Greek, no eidos.  —This is the very idea that frightens people about Hades, Socrates thinks: the name of the place (that is, of the god whose place it is), Ἅιδης, Haidēs, resembles ἀειδής, aeidēs, which is ἀ-εἶδος, a-eidos, ‘without form,’ ‘invisible,’ ‘unknowable’ (Cratylus 403a).  In truth, their anxiety is unwarranted: it is the world that is ever-changing, while the ideal realm of the invisible is the proper place of the soul that is like it (Phaedo 79a–81d).

The blind poets’ notions of Heaven’s light gone down to shine in the underworld, and of the darkness below risen up to infect the world above—both suggest the curious image of a black sun.  Where was it first formulated in this phrase?  The first occurrence I am aware of is in Heine’s Der Schiffbrüchige, The Shipwrecked One, whose eponymous figure describes by it the eye of his lost beloved:

…Und aus dem süßen, blassen Antlitz,
Groß und gewaltig, strahlt ein Auge,
Wie eine schwarze Sonne.

O, du schwarze Sonne, wie oft,
Entzückend oft, trank ich aus dir
die wilden Begeistrungsflammen…

And out of her sweet, pale face,
large and powerful, beams an eye,
like a black sun.

O thou black sun, how often,
enchantingly often, I drank from thee
wild flames of inspiration…

Now he lies on a barren shore.  A quarter-century later Nerval uses the expression in his famous El Desdichado, which begins:

Je suis le ténébreux, — le veuf, — l’inconsolé,
Le prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie :
Ma seule étoile est morte, — et mon luth constellé
Porte le Soleil noir de la Mélancolie.

I am the dark one,—the widower,—the unconsoled,
the prince of Aquitaine with the ruined tower:
my only star is dead,—and my star-spangled lute
bears the black Sun of Melancholy.

Elsewhere (as the Pléiade edition points out) he alludes to “the black sun of melancholy, which sheds dark rays upon the face of the dreaming angel of Albert [sic] Dürer”; thus the allusion is to the well-known engraving “Melencolia I.”  Without going further into this poem, I note that in its own way it seems to continue the theme of the castaway.  Following Walter Scott’s error in Ivanhoe, Nerval presumably thinks the Spanish title means “The Disinherited One,” separated from his patrimony; and in his lostness the speaker resembles Keats’s knight, “alone and palely loitering.”  He says, “J’ai rêvé dans la grotte où nage la syrène…,” “I have dreamed in the grotto where the siren swims…”; but unlike Odysseus, he has acquired the knowledge she imparts.

After all I suppose the theme of shipwreck is nothing more than a particular case of the favorite condition of the poets, that of exile.

There is a house within. It is the place where Jesus preached his greatest sermons. It is where Buddha shook hands with enlightenment. It is the hearth where we seek solace and consolation when all around us grief is in its fullest bloom.

So began the first chapter of Dr. D. Watson’s first book, Tearing Down the House Within. You may have read that passage elsewhere. It’s been cited in books of quotations, internet profiles, spiritual anthologies, wedding vows, yearbook pages, blog mastheads, and even Presidential debates. Now does it ring a bell?

You would think, then, that the author would still be cashing fresh fat royalty checks. That he’d at least have a career peddling mystical woowoo on late night radio call in shows. You certainly wouldn’t think that a man of his long academic career would be living off loans from his former students, or spending his last days exiled in an Italian shack. But there it is. Dr. Watson’s most influential work has been out of print for most of the 32 years since it was published.

Pity the poor professor, but realize, as well, that he had no one but himself to blame. The book suffered a poor reputation because it was, in all honesty, a poor book – poorly argued, poorly organized, poorly concluded. He built up his thesis in the ten brisk pages of his first chapter, and then spent the next 756 pages tearing it down.

For the curious, here is the book briefly: God exists but is hiding, He is like a house within us, we must tear apart this house, and rebuild it on the outside; which is to say, we must build God on earth. There you go, sounds familiar, like any other mystical tome you’d find on cluttered used book store shelves. Except that Dr. Watson wasn’t much of a mystic, or even a believer in spirits or angels or the like. He believed in God as a very real being, with very real power, but lacking the temporal means to act on that power. Somewhere in the calendar of creation, God, having set things in motion, got lost along the way, and was trapped in between existence and nothingness. We mortals, as products of His creation, each have little pieces of Him inside us. When we finally kill the last piece of God within us, we can begin rebuilding Him in our image. We’ll be gods ourselves. We will, in essence, through this process of god-killing, finally realize the highest, most advanced form of civilization for which man is capable. The sad thing is that this summary is more coherent than the arguments contained in the actual book.

As one reviewer put it, “It’s a little like arguing that the best way to find gold is to hunt down and kill all the leprechauns.” Of course, when I wrote that review I would’ve thought it daft if anyone had so much as suggested that I’d later be working for the man – and as his assistant, no less. At the time I thought he was some kind of maniac – an opinion that my nearly twenty years in his service did little to change. And yet it was to me that he entrusted the security of his papers, as well as the perpetuation of his legacy. He knew I didn’t believe in his theories; indeed, he even kept a blown-up copy of my scathing review pinned to the wall of his office.

He called me the “Chief Unbeliever”. Unbeliever, of course, meant anyone who heaped scorn on his theories, or otherwise ridiculed him; since that included most of the sentient creatures on the planet, I was singled out as the most prominent of these. “You stand out,” he told me, “because you alone are a match for my brain. You, my boy, are my intellectual equal.” I should have felt insulted, but his endearing tone always won me over. He’d always been a lonely man, in one way or another, usually because he rejected the ideas of other men, shutting himself up in his own private world. By the time I met him, he was a nearly broken man, ridiculed by his peers, and no longer lonely by choice. He was ill, and desperate for human companionship. It would’ve been rude—not to mention callous—to reject him.

“There, do you see it?” We’d just made it to the top of the hill, and Mr. Watson was pointing ahead of us. The rain was still coming down, and it was dark all around, but if you strained your eyes you could see the faint lights of a small house.

“Oh, sweet Jesus, I thought we’d never make it,” said Trevor, or possibly Terrence. I didn’t know which it was to my left or right.

All I could say, weakly through my still-sore throat, was “At last…at last.”

We made our way up the final path to the professor’s cabin, Sophia leading the way. I kept picturing him from our last contentious meeting five years earlier. He was old and dying then, and now I wondered if I’d be there when the lights of his own house within were finally dimmed.

Paul DiAnno ANULAT la Cluj. Rămâne valabil concertul la Bucureşti.

Paradise Lost la Cluj se amână pentru luna februarie 2010.

Revenim cu amănunte.

Lipsa de interes din partea publicului clujean pentru aceste evenimente şi pentru cumpărarea din timp a biletelor este de vină pentru aceste măsuri drastice ale organizatorilor. Pentru Paul DiAnno nu se vânduse nici un bilet.

Astfel, clujenii merită să asculte doar Bere Gratis la Festivalurile de pe Platoul Sălii Sporturilor.

Am mai publicat asta aseară timp de o oră dar nu avusesem confirmarea finală de la organizator şi am scos articolul ca să confirm mai întâi personal anularea cântărilor la Cluj.

Paradise Lost – Mannheim, Alte Feuerwache 14.11.2009

photographed for: www.blacklive.de

http://www.paradiselost.co.uk/

On Thursdays I have Reading and Writing Poetry with The Big Name in the Creative Writing Department. No one will deny that The Big Name knows what she’s talking about because she actually wrote the book on writing poetry, but that just makes the sting all the worse when you get your poem back riddled with comments like:

“Why the torturous syntax?”

“We, as readers, are given no indication that the speaker is trying to dig below the surface at all.”

“A pyrrhic/spondee pairing? That’s comical.”

Pyrrhic/spondee pairing? I can’t even take her insults at face value, I have to go to the back of her book and look these terms up in her glossary. As it turns out, the pyrrhic and the spondee are metrical feet with specific stressed and unstressed patterns. But I am meter-deaf. Everything looks iambic to me. It’s like making fun of a blind guy because his socks don’t match. You don’t do that.

But this Thursday, I couldn’t face The Big Name. I only got four hours of sleep the night before, and her class is at nine-thirty. I got four hours of sleep because I saw Paranormal Activity Monday night, and since then, the only way I can fall asleep is by watching episodes of South Park until the point of exhaustion (to keep my mind off of the demon that may or may not be standing right next to my bed). But I don’t make a habit of skipping classes, so I shower and dance around my room to Beck’s “Debra” on repeat until I am ready to face the day.

I am not the only one who is afraid of The Big Name. When I arrive that morning, munching what is left of a candy bar that I was too terrified to finish during Paranormal Activity, another student is turning the clock a few minutes ahead. She informs those of us who are present that she is doing this because The Big Name uses that clock, and this way, we can get out a few minutes earlier.

The Big Name arrives in a flurry of papers a few minutes late, and apologizes for being later than normal. She’s not, but the clock tells her she is. Everyone watches as she moves to a seat on the far side of the table. The kids on that end tense up, afraid she will smell the TV on them. The Big Name is very glad she doesn’t own a TV anymore. She told me so herself.

She begins to read her favorite lines from our imitations of Milton’s Paradise Lost. I don’t even get my hopes up. I wrote my imitation about Luke Skywalker’s duel with Darth Vader at Cloud City. I used a metaphor involving the word “asteroid.” The only way she might find my poem charming would be if she mistook it for  a Biblical allusion.

There is a major disparity between those things which The Big Name deems as having merit and the things I deem as having merit. She loves all poems about famous ballerinas, Greek epics, and classic operas. I know no famous ballerinas, although I know that Degas painted them a lot. I have read The Iliad and The Odyssey, I have seen Disney’s Hercules, but my knowledge of classical literature (and cinema) stops there. I have also seen the cinematic version of The Phantom of the Opera, but I have no urge to write poetry about any of these things.

While I don’t wholly expect The Big Name to deem Star Wars as having merit, I did expect her to know who The Lorax was. She didn’t. Which meant my Petrachan Sonnet titled “The Lorax of Old Maxwell Street” meant nothing to her. She also has never heard of Doubt. In one poem I referenced a bass guitar. She asked me if I meant “a bass fiddle.”

Before class ends, The Big Name informs me a poem that I wrote is so heavily enjambed that it is impossible to discern the meter. I determine that this is like telling a guy in a wheelchair that his top bookshelves need dusting. I write this down in my list of similes that I think The Big Name would positively hate right below “dander flying up off the dog, glinting in the sunlight – like snowfall in reverse.” The Big Name has noted that many of my poems involve “too much detritus.”

Class adjourns four minutes ahead of schedule, and I am left unscathed, save that stab about enjambment.

Thank you Katatonia, for not giving us another boring, paint by numbers “I can do it in iMovie” music video of the band playing live with the cd track over the top. Thank you again for not going all story on us and trying to be epic (even though your music certainly warrants such a thing). Lastly, thank you Katatonia for picking the perfect setting for your music; the woods. Particularly, the woods at dusk when everything is it’s most ominous.

However, you did one thing odd with your abstract, “let’s get hot goth models in here to writhe around and shit” approach; you made me really, really confused. See, your new album, Night is the New Day, is amazing. It takes me on a dark, lonely journey that sends chills up my spine. Subsequently, I would love for the music video for one of the tracks to do the same. Instead, I find myself slightly disturbed, but not really “creep-ed out.” I also got no real sense of dread, which is where the confusion came in. Why are these women doing this? Why are there worms everywhere? What’s with the buildings? What’s that black shit some of the girls spew into the sky? I will admit, I sometimes don’t get abstract art. Usually though, a general idea comes into my head about the meaning… eventually. This time, such was not the case. So kudos for following the Paradise Lost model of making videos and trying to genuinely evoke those deep, dark feelings, but you only half way got there.

Sincerely, Dan.

Blog 60, 11.11.2009

…dieser Text macht grad ein Reisli. Er wird aber wiederkommen.

Con el reciente lanzamiento de su ultimo disco de estudio, Faith Divides Us – Death Unites Us, quería hacer unos breves comentarios acerca de una de mis bandas preferidas a lo largo de los últimos años. Paradise lost, los descubrí, pues  por el año 98 mas o menos, el primer disco que escuché fue el maravilloso y para mi aún no superado Draconian Times, era una época en la que era difícil encontrar cierta música, entre que no teníamos demasiado dinero e internet no era tan accesible, hacerme con los discos de Paradise me llevo un buen tiempo jejej.

La carrera de Paradise lost puede diferenciarse en varias etapas para mi gusto:

La primera incluiría sus cuatro primeros discos, del lost paradise al icon. Esta seria una época en la q las influencias death, doom y gothic predominaban en la banda. Esta es una característica fija de este grupo a lo largo de la historia, para mi es imposible encasillarlos en un solo sonido, en cada uno de sus discos nos encontramos con muchísimas variantes musicales.

Su segunda etapa, incluirían los maravillosos Draconian Times y One Second. Obvio es decir que esta es mi época favorita, el sonido es mas limpio, algunos dicen que mas comercial, pero ya no vemos una banda extrema, se acercan incluso a elementos mas hardrock.

La siguiente etapa para mi incluyen sus discos Host, BIN y Symbol of life, El denominador común es el uso de guitarras computerizadas, muchos sampleados, etc, etapa en la que mucha gente vio un decaimiento de la banda, se les llego a compara incluso con Depeche Mode XDD, aunq a mi en el Symbol of life me recuerdan muchisimo a la época Mutter de rammstein.

Y por ultimo sus tres últimos discos, pues que decir, como creo que ya han explorado todas las vertientes del metal, en estes discos hacen lo q les da la gana y cuando les da la gana, a veces se acercan mas a sus primeros discos, como en el Paradise lost, en otras tocan mas la época DT OS, vaya siguen dando temazos y abarcando todos los temas que han tocado en veinte años de carrera.

Discografia:

Álbumes

• Lost Paradise -1990
• Gothic – 1991
• Shades of God – 1992
• Icon – 1993
• Draconian Times – 1995
• One Second – 1997
• Host – 1999
• Believe in Nothing – 2001
• Symbol of Life – 2002
• Paradise Lost- 2005
• In Requiem – 2007
• Faith Divides Us – Death Unites Us – 2009

Para + info su web oficial y la siempre util wikipedia

Y por ultimo os dejo con los videos de algunos de sus mejores temas

Faith Divides Us – Death Unites Us
Paradise Lost
Any: 2009
Nota: 8

Parlar de Paradise Lost és parlar de Gothic Metal i també de constància, talent, duresa, robustesa i foscor. Ara tornen amb ‘Faith Divides Us – Death Unites Us’, el seu nou LP. En aquest llarga durada els de Halifax endureixen una mica el seu registre si bé no abandonen els característics efectes operístics i de corda presents en els seus últims treballs. El disc té personalitat i grans moments tot i que en aquesta ocasió no es mostra tan inspirat com el cèlebre ‘Symbol of Life’, àlbum que va revitalitzar la seva estancada carrera a principis d’aquesta dècada. Tot i això, ‘Faith Divides Us – Death Unites Us’ és molt millor que els seus discrets predecessors ‘Paradise Lost’ i ‘In Requiem’.

L’àlbum és rocós com la veu de Nick Holmes que torna a passejar-se per davant del micro amb els seus cabernosos i entranyables ‘yeah’. Cançons com ‘As Horizons End’, ‘I Remain’ i ‘First Light’ mostren una banda en plena forma que a més incorpora nou bateria, l’ex Cradle of Filth, Adrian Erlandsson. En el tram final del disc el paradís perdut ens regala tres perles com són la cançó que dóna nom al disc ‘Faith Divides Us – Death Unites Us’, la solitària ‘Rise Of Denial’ i la fantàstica i enganxosa ‘Last Regreat’.

Després d’escoltar-lo mirem el calendari per veure en què cau el 15 de desembre, data del seu concert a Barcelona. I sí, és clar que hi serem.

… 3 nouveautés sont venues enrichir ma “CDthèque”: les derniers albums de Transatlantic et de Hourglass, et l’avant dernier de Paradise Lost.

Transatlantic est ce qu’on appelle communément un super groupe composé de Neal Morse (ex Spock’s Beard) aux claviers et chant, Mike Portnoy (Dream Theater) à la batterie, Roine Stolt (The Flower Kings) aux guitares et Pete Trewavas (Marillion) à la basse. L’album s’intitule “The Whirlwind” et ne contient qu’une seule plage de près de 78 minutes mais divisée cependant en 12 parties distinctes. Leur précédent album date déjà de 2001. C’est aussi le 1er album que j’achète et j’avoue que c’est surtout la présence de Neal Morse et de Mike Portnoy qui m’a incité à acquérir ce genre de disque qui à priori semblerait un peu trop orienté rock progressif, et donc un trop soft à mon goût pour assouvir ma soif métallique. Mais (est-ce l’âge?), comme cela a déjà été le cas avec Knight Area le mois passé, quelques incursions dans un style moins heavy mais néanmoins très progressif me procurent également beaucoup de plaisir. Le plaisir d’avoir le sentiment d’être emporté dans un long et riche voyage musical aux multiples références aux années 60 (un peu avec les Beatles principalement sur le 2ème CD bonus avec la chanson Lenny Johnson) et surtout à l’âge d’or du rock progressif, les années 70.  La prestation des musiciens est évidemment impeccable et la production vraiment irréprochable.  Un album qui pourrait prétendre au titre d’album du mois de novembre mais attendons un peu les prochaines sorties…

Hourglass est un groupe US de métal progressif ayant à son actif 4 albums dont le dernier “Oblivious To The Obvious” est sorti en ce début d’année 2009 mais a seulement débarqué chez mon disquaire la semaine passée. En effet, c’est un album totalement autoproduit et qui n’était disponible jusqu’alors que via leur site internet du groupe grâce au système PayPal puisqu’ils n’ont pas de label.

De bout en bout, l’album qui comprend 2 CDs et s’étale sur près de 140 minutes, est superbement réalisé. Le travail de chaque instrument, et principalement de la basse est remarquable de maîtrise. L’atmosphère se dégageant de cet album peut être tantôt puissante et lourde comme sur le premier morceau “On The Brink”, tantôt mélancolique et mélodieuse comme sur “Homeward Bound”. Les ambiances sont donc très fouillées et variées. Nous avons même droit à de l’acoustique avec une guitare hispanisante sur la 3ème plage du 1er CD: “Pawn II”.

Je vous invite vraiment à découvrir cet album. Il n’est certes pas évident d’accrocher au début,  mais il se révèlera certainement petit à petit à vos oreilles au fur et à mesure des écoutes.

Quant à Paradise Lost, l’achat de leur dernier album m’a incité à également découvrir leur galette précédente sachant que celle-ci s’avérait dans le même style et même supérieure selon les chroniques de certains webzines. Et je ne démentirai pas effectivement. J’ai une préférence pour cet album “In requiem”.

Vandaag hebben een tochtje gemaakt naar Kiambu (Esther’s geboorteplaats) en Paradise Lost (een picnickplek met een waterval, een meer en een grot). Kiambu ligt even ten noorden van Nairobi. We waren er al eens eerder geweest om het ziekenhuis waar Esther vandaan komt te bezoeken. Toen vonden we het al een prachtig gebied met alle koffieplantages in het heuvelland en is het op het te-bezoeken-lijstje gekomen.

Eerst heel Nairobi centrum doorgecrost, wat op zondagmorgen uitzonderlijk soepel ging, om vervolgens de afslag richting Kiambu te nemen. Verrassend snel zit je dan in de heuvels met bossen en alle plantages. Wat een verademing! Het mooie weer hielp natuurlijk ook mee. Kiambu ligt een kilometer of tien de stad uit en wordt gezien als een opkomende stad met veel invloed. Ik moet eerlijk zeggen dat ik dat er niet vanaf zag.

Op de plaats van bestemming aangekomen eerst een kerkdienst bezocht van een mede-student van Judith die daar zijn eigen kerk is begonnen. Je huurt een golfplaten schuur in hartje centrum (vlakbij waar dat gebouw laatst is ingestort) en een goede swingende band, je zet een groot bord buiten en je hebt een nieuwe kerk, zo gaat dat hier. De band swingde de pan uit en het overwegend jonge publiek swingde mee. Dat is iets waar kerken in Nederland van kunnen leren: dat de wekelijkse bezinning ook iets kan zijn waar het enthousiasme van afspat. Dit in tegenstelling tot de het-leven-is-geen-lolletje-en-er-mag-zeker-niet-gelachen-worden-uitstraling die ik meer dan eens bij Nederlandse kerkbezoekers heb aangetroffen. Na twee uur hadden we het gehad met het “God is great” en “Praise the name of the Lord” (de preek was nog niet eens begonnen…) en zijn een rondje gaan lopen in de stad. Omdat Esther uit het ziekenhuis van Kiambu komt, kijk je toch anders naar zo’n stad en de omgeving. Ergens hier niet al te ver vandaan liggen toch haar biologische roots en ik heb geprobeerd zoveel mogelijk van de sfeer op te snuiven zodat we dat later aan Esther kunnen vertellen.

Paradise Lost ligt even buiten Kiambu en het is een koffieplantage waar toevallig ook een meer, een waterval en een grot is, wat wordt geëxploiteerd als picknickplaats. Het een relaxte plek waar je de prachtige omgeving goed tot je door kan laten dringen. Wij kwamen er aan rond lunchtijd en hadden reuze trek. Na slechts 2,5 uur lukte het het plaatselijke etablissement om twee bordjes friet, wat vlees en wat groente op tafel te zetten. De drie vorken die erbij werden geserveerd waren slechts op mijn dringende aanwijzing, anders hadden we ze niet gekregen. Het was wel lekker overigens. Ik raad iedereen aan om als je hier heen gaat een barbecue in je auto te laden met lekkere vleesjes. Dat deden onze buren ook en wij waren na verloop van tijd best jaloers…

Er is van alles te doen: even naar de waterval en de grot, rondje langs het meer lopen, bootje huren, paard rijden, kameel rijden, struisvogels voeren en wat al niet meer. Meer dan genoeg voor een middagje uit.

We zijn teruggereden via Limuru. Mooie route waarbij je dan weer uitkomt bij Village Market.

Meer foto’s zijn hier te vinden.

“… [Paradise Lost] is a further text in which the concept of human freedom is absolutely at the heart of the argument; especially in Book III, in which— It’s an amazing discussion in Book III, when the authorial voice speaks out in favour of the concept of the freedom of the will. After all, Milton, a radical puritan— and the whole Calvinistic background insisting on double predestination: everyone is predestined either to salvation or not, and no actions of yours are other than predestined— Milton speaking in favour of the doctrine of the freedom of the will, and thus—and this its why it’s critical, of course, to the whole organization of the great poem—of Adam and Eve’s disobedience as not a predestined act: it is a freely-chosen act; that’s utterly crucial to the way in which the epic mutates into a tragedy. Without that freedom, there is no tragedy.

“It is true, of course, that God has complete foreknowledge of what will happen, but that is not the same as saying that it is pre-ordained; and God speaks: “I formed them free, and free they must remain / Til they enthrall themselves.”

“Now, besides this theological commitment, Milton, in Paradise Lost, is much concerned again with what it means to be a free person, to be able to live freely, in the opening two books— it’s a major theme of the opening two books, isn’t it. But if you now turn to those passages, you’ll find yourself confronting something which all readers of the poem have been deeply disconcerted by, who know anything about Milton’s prose works: [...] the language in which Milton had previously vindicated the cause of the English Republic—that is to say, the language of freedom and not vassalage, of hard liberty instead of lazy servility, of an upright life and not the bended knee—this is the language spoken by Satan, and his most hellish confederates.”

Prof. Quentin Skinner, ‘John Milton as a Theorist of Liberty’ (The Lady Margaret Lectures), Mill Lane Lecture Rooms, University of Cambridge, 30 Jan. 2008

Milton’s “Paradise Lost” is an exquisitely detailed masterpiece of epic literature that outlines the fall of mankind as depicted in the Bible. The poem is divided into twelve books, the fourth of which describes how the story’s infamous antagonist Satan ventures to Earth to contrive a way he can bring about ruin to the creation of God he has heard about. Satan was once loved by God, but was condemned when his aspirations to rule led him to attempt an overthrow of God’s kingdom. Feeling unjustly punished for his crime, Satan’s purpose is motivated by a thirst for revenge, and Milton’s work of character description goes above and beyond the duty of a poet to bring to the reader a Satan who is at once, solemn yet resolute in his plot to wreak havoc against a God who has cast him from the face of heaven.

When Satan reaches Mt. Niphates, a tragic side of himself is revealed in a moment of reflection. He sees the sun and is touched by memories of Heaven’s glory and his once valued position before God. Satan’s mood adopts human characteristics of remorse by these memories, and he is somehow saddened in spite of his malicious plan to lash out at God. But his fury is ignited once more when he deigns that God must have somehow endowed him with a powerful will to rebel, though he is frustrated by this circular logic. “O had his powerful destiny ordained me some inferior angel,” he states during his soliloquy upon the mountain; Satan is under the complete impression that by being created with the intrinsic nature to fail as a spirit-child of God, he has somehow been short-changed by some manipulative, ulterior motive. Although these ideas enrage him within, his thoughts allow him to ponder whether or not he could claim redemption. When he concedes to himself that his very nature, whether preordained or not, is subject to rebelliousness no matter the condition, his thoughts quickly revert to ferocious hate. Satan’s anger at God is so deeply rooted that he perceives the notion of redemption as ultimately futile. Satan fully understands the omnipotence of God’s power, and he not only surmises that God has already thought all of this through, but he becomes resolute in fulfilling God’s all-knowing predictions with the most nefarious of his malice. If God has somehow chosen Satan to enact a crucial part of some grand scheme to play out over time, the fury of Satan has become the essential impetus to initiate the plan into action.

Milton paints the figure of Satan vividly during this moment of self-reflection, employing facial descriptions of “ire, envy, and despair.” Such emotions are not pleasing to experience, and yet they act as a sort of morbid inspiration for the devil’s purpose. Satan is soon an ambitious, curious spirit who wanders about the Garden of Eden, recovered and reequipped with his natural instincts of cunning and avaricious malice. He is in no hurry to return to Hell, and the hope of discovering a means to create problems for God drive him to watch and wait. The fascination with which he catalogues the wonders of Eden in his mind is testament to the intelligence level that Satan possesses; Satan is acutely enlightened to the awesome power of God. His intelligence is tickled when his eyes fall upon Adam and Eve, at which he gazes with surprise and subtle wonder; they appear unbelievably divine to him. Though Satan’s intelligence level provides him the patience to simply observe with a sense of skeptical awe, his innate haughtiness drives him to inwardly and immediately vow to a state of ruin for the both of them. Satan’s jealousy has been inflamed by the exasperating breadth of their beauty, and his motivation to destroy becomes ever so decisive that he perceives victory before even knowing the exact means by which he will do so.

Satan’s plan becomes etched in stone when he eavesdrops on Adam speaking to Eve. But first he is appalled by how disgustingly good and beautiful God has made them, and is mildly infuriated by a contrasting, mental picture of their luxurious Eden to his ugly Hell; Adam and Eve are living with lavishing gifts from God while he, a spirit-child once dearly loved, has been cast from grace without forgiveness. Immersed in a cool and collected jealousy, his emotional flare-up does not cause him to overreact. His thoughts instead process the information he has gained concerning the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. By now his ruminations on the possibility of redemption have long since fled, and Satan’s mind is now capitalizing on the prospect of temptation; since the fruit of the tree is forbidden by penalty of death, he will tempt them with eating the fruit by suggesting that to do so would be perfectly harmless. His eavesdropping, however, has provided more than just the means by which he will ruin what he fiendishly terms, the “gentle pair,” but has given him insight into whom his trickery will work best.

When the dialogue unfolded between the lovers, Satan seemed to discern that Eve must be of the weaker sex. Adam spoke of his knowledge of the rules of the forbidden fruit, which possibly indicated to Satan that he must know more than Eve. Satan understands that knowledge is power, for God has great knowledge and power, but he may have reinforced this view of inequality between the two when Eve spoke of her encounter with a reflection of herself in the water. She revealed how she was startled, knowing not what the image was, but was somehow enlightened as to the explanation and implications of the reflection that was herself. The event tells of the susceptibility to confusion she possessed at the time, a type of uncertainty she may be predisposed to possess again in the future. Continuing in her words, Eve described how she “yields” to her lover, wherein Satan must have ultimately concluded that Eve does not quite hold the same level of ethereal status as Adam. Satan configures these conclusions into a course of action that is realized when Ithuriel and Zephon find Satan “squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve.” Satan has made his job as easy as possible by choosing Eve as the subject of his temptation because he senses that through her, he will meet with a more likely chance of success.

The events that outline this hateful mode of behavior clearly reveal a Satan who is immensely distraught by the circumstances that he realizes, are largely a result of his own actions. This fact does not change the sheer hatred Satan has developed for all things Godly. That Adam and Eve talk of their love for each other only serves to propel Satan’s desire to destroy them even further; their love is grotesquely representative of God’s goodness, and this fills him with a dire sense of loathing. Satan is renowned for his jealousy and fierce ambition to take over Heaven, and his inclination to harness this type of behavior materializes yet again when he observes the two lovers engaged in their acts of devotion to one another and to God. An odd part of him feels that God’s paradise is so replete with perfection that to bring about destruction would be a travesty, that only his impassioned, unchanging fate as a servant of evil demands that he attempt to do so. Yet another part of him feels he is only passing on the torch of God’s fate, that he has been composed with all of the mental components to be demonically evil. Ultimately his conviction to defy God remains as pronounced and steadfast as from the very meeting with his cohorts that defined him as king of Pandemonium in the first place. The panoramic vistas of paradise inflame his emotions with resentment when he thinks on the ugliness of Hell, and his jealousy skyrockets when he considers the tender love extending between Adam and Eve that makes him so sick. This classic tapestry of ill-fated emotions entangled with such extreme portraits of goodness present to the reader a Satan who has become acutely resolute in achieving success toward anything that may ease the pangs of his troubled mind. Where the aspects of what is good and what is evil have collided, Satan’s inwardly response is likened unto the result of some explosive, chemical reaction.

Satan does well at justifying his behavior when confronting Gabriel, in the process completing the outline that defines him as the prime candidate for bringing about the fall of mankind. “Lives there who loves his pain?” inquires Satan, speaking to the arch-angel who has momentarily captured him. This is Satan’s champion statement and open confession: Satan is a being with nothing to lose. He has his hatred of all things good, he has his resentment toward a God who refuses to forgive him, he has the creaturely creations of God at his disposal to destroy if he can only manage to succeed, and he has an eternity of time to go about the process with seemingly nothing better to do.