PARADISE LOST Announces February/March 2026 European Tour

Icons of melancholic doom and gothic metal PARADISE LOST have announced the second leg of their "Ascension Of Europe" tour, expanding the original run, which will start on October 10, by 21 new dates.

Tickets for the new shows go on sale today, Friday, October 3, via paradiselost.co.uk.

PARADISE LOST "Ascension Of Europe Tour Part 2" 2026 dates:

Feb. 06 - NL - Leeuwarden - Neushoom
Feb. 07 - DE - Hamburg - Markethalle
Feb. 08 - DK - Aarhus - Voxhall
Feb. 10 - SE - Gothenburg - Pustervik
Feb. 11 - NO - Oslo - John Dee
Feb. 13 - SE - Karlstad - Nöjesfabriken
Feb. 14 - SE - Norrköping - Arbis
Feb. 15 - SE - Stockholm - Debaser
Feb. 18 - FI - Lahti - Finlandia-Klubi
Feb. 19 - FI - Tampere - Tavara-Asema
Feb. 20 - FI - Helsinki - Ääniwalli
Feb. 21 - EE - Tallinn - Helitehas
Feb. 22 - LV - Riga - Spelet
Feb. 24 - LT - Vilnius - Loftas
Feb. 27 - PL - Gdansk - B90
Feb. 28 - PL - Warsaw - Progresja
Mar. 02 - PL - Wroclaw - A2
Mar. 03 - DE - Berlin - Huxleys Neue Welt
Mar. 04 - DE - Leipzig - Felsenkeller
Mar. 05 - DE - Hannover - Capitol
Mar. 06 - NL - Zoetermeer - Poppodium Boerderij

In a recent interview with India's Sinusoidal Music, PARADISE LOST vocalist Nick Holmes spoke about the British gothic metal pioneers' 17th album, "Ascension", which came out on September 19 via Nuclear Blast Records. The band's first LP in five years, following 2020's critically acclaimed "Obsidian", was produced by guitarist Gregor Mackintosh and mixed/mastered by Lawrence Mackrory. Asked about PARADISE LOST's mindset going into the writing process for "Ascension", Nick said: "When we're writing songs, it's just about what we like as fans of music. It's first and foremost — we kind of set the bar very high. We are our own biggest critics on every level. So if I'm writing lyrics, I like to write lyrics that I like to read, and I change them often — I change them constantly, in fact, as I'm writing them, and I come back to them again and again… There's nothing done by accident. We spend a lot of time arranging songs and going back to them again.

"We had quite a lot of time at work on this album, time to kind of reflect on," he continued. "And a lot of the songs were written with big gaps in between. Obviously, we had the pandemic for two years, but we started writing, I think, prior to that, and then we picked it up after that again. And then we realized we didn't like what we'd written, so we changed again and then started again. But after all these years, it's always hard to get the ball rolling. And we never really look back at what we've done in the past… It's always hard to get the ball rolling, but once it starts, you get there eventually, which we have done, I guess."

Elaborating on the reasons for the long gap between "Obsidian" and "Ascension", Nick said: "It was about five years [between the two albums]. It's usually kind of around three years between each album, because you write and record and then you tour it for 18 months or perhaps longer, depending on if you go to America, and you spend more time in America, which we haven't done that for a while. In the two years [during the pandemic], we did a side kind of project, Greg and myself, with the HOST project. And then we re-recorded [PARADISE LOST's] 'Icon' album as well [for its 30th anniversary]."

Asked to name the most "challenging part" about creating "Ascension", Holmes said: "Like I said before, I think it's when you start writing, it's really difficult. You kind of don't know what's going on for the first few songs — it's a bit of a gray area — but then when you have maybe three or four songs, you start to get a gist of the writing process. So I always think of it as a snowball rolling down a mountain side, collecting snow, and it gets bigger and bigger. It kind of reminds me of that. But, yeah, there's so many albums as well. You don't wanna repeat yourself, but whatever we do, we just sound like PARADISE LOST. I do think we have a sound, mainly Greg's guitar, really, is the sound of the band, I think — his lead guitar playing. But I think just starting writing is always a bit kind of daunting. And that's based on just the amount of time we've been around and the amount of albums we've written."

"Ascension"'s album cover fittingly features the painting "The Court Of Death" (1870-1902) by renowned British artist George Frederic Watts, which hangs in the Tate Gallery in London. The painting depicts Death as an enthroned angel flanked by allegorical figures of Silence and Mystery guarding sunrise and the star of hope, while a warrior surrenders his sword and a duke his coronet, showing that worldly status offers no protection. The painting's bleak, prophetic vision embodies "Ascension"'s dark, tormented soundscapes as mournful verses collide with dire, foreboding riffs.

In a separate interview with Jerry Kurunen of Rauta, Mackintosh stated about the making of "Ascension": "Something that really changed the approach to this record was… It was 30 years since our 'Icon' album a year or two ago, and we had to do a re-recording. But having to do that, re-learn those songs in such depth and re-record it put me in the headspace of '92, '93, 'Shades Of God', 'Icon' era, and that kind of influenced the songwriting for this record a a little bit. So probably over half the album is very much in that vein."

After Kurunen noted that PARADISE LOST has come "full circle" by returning to the band's "death/doom" roots on some of its recent albums, Mackintosh said: "Well, when you say full circle, the first time that was mentioned to me was when we did 'The Plague Within' [2015] album, which is — I don't know what year; it was 2014 or something — and I'd say that's true. That's pretty true. But since then we have been trying to maneuver around it, all our influences from all the past in different ways. Like 'Medusa' [2017] was far more of kind of sludgy record, and then the last one before this one, 'Obsidian' [2020], kind of has more gothy influences again, and this one, because of the 'Icon' re-recording, like I said, is kind of traveling somewhere between the 'Shades Of God', 'Icon' era-ish, but with a twist of now."

Asked what it felt for him and his PARADISE LOST bandmates to be inspired by their own music while making "Ascension", Gregor said: "It wasn't inspired by our own music. It was kind of — I said this before — it is kind of puts you in the headspace of where you were at that time, what your influences were at that time, how you felt. And at that time, around 'Shades Of God' and 'Icon', we were very much into the… Even the name 'Paradise Lost'. We even went back to that, It's from the book. What does the book mean? What's it about? What are the themes? This religious imagery, over-the-top religious imagery, even though we're all atheists. So we kind of went down that path. And with the music, it was just a case of… I never used to play the same thing as any of the other… It was, like, we were all playing our different bits and there wasn't too much riffage. It was there, but I was more of this harmony guy all the time. So we delved into that on this record. So it was more like the headspace. It wasn't really being influenced by our own stuff. It was just, like, 'Huh, this is interesting.' 'Cause over the years, incrementally, your style of playing changes, your style of songwriting changes, and you forget certain things. And then just revisiting it makes you think, 'Ah, okay.' … I mean, you try not to repeat yourself, obviously, but it gives you a warm feeling… So if you're getting that, it must be a good thing."

Mackintosh added: "I had half this album written three years ago. I had six or seven songs written, and I scrapped the whole lot because I wasn't happy with it. And then I just gave up for a year. And then we did the 'Icon' [re-recording] thing, and I was, like, 'Ah, okay. This is what it should be about. This is how it should go.' And so I've never used anything from those six or seven songs. If you're not feeling it, you're not feeling it. And we're in a lucky position that we haven't got a label saying, 'You've got to release this.' We do it in our own time. So if you're gonna live with something, it's better that you're comfortable with it."

Photo credit: Ville Juurikkala