PARADISE LOST Frontman: 'Every Album We Do We Try To Make Better Than The Previous One'

Vassil Varbanov of Bulgaria's Tangra Mega Rock recently conducted an interview with PARADISE LOST frontman Nick Holmes. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Tangra Mega Rock: You've obviously been around for quite a while now and this is not your first release. However, although your new CD is ready, it will be officially released in a month. What kind of reactions are you getting so far?

Nick Holmes: Very positive. There are just three tracks circling at the moment ("Beneath Black Skies", "Godless" and the title song off the maxi-single "The Enemy") and there's not much negativity. Everybody who heard it seems to like it, so we keep our fingers crossed and will see what happens.

Tangra Mega Rock: To what extent do you find "In Requiem" better than your previous effort, "Paradise Lost"?

Nick Holmes: Every album we do we try to make better than the previous one. We've got a bigger sound of the guitars and the drums, we didn't use ProTools as much as we had them in the past, and we kind of deliberately tried to make everything a lot heavier than on "Paradise Lost". I think the sound is a lot more live — we dropped a big part of the technology, so most of what you hear is what we've played.

Tangra Mega Rock: Basically, the main difference between the world of today, when you're releasing your 11th album, and the early '90s, when you had support by the likes of MTV, is that nowadays there are just magazines and independent radiostations like ours supporting the scene. Does it make any difference to you?

Nick Holmes: Of course. There's no output for heavy bands on media like MTV. I mean, there's some in England, but not in Germany, I believe. You have to adapt. Nowadays the Internet is a really good way of spreading the message of your music — via YouTube, MySpace and stuff. These are very useful things now, especially for underground bands.

Tangra Mega Rock: We know that in the U.K. it's quite different from what's in Germany and the rest of Europe. Are you more of a British band in terms of recognition or you'd say you have more fans in the rest of Europe?

Nick Holmes: We definitely have more fans in the rest of Europe. Since our early days we've always done most of our concerts abroad. We do have a good following in England, but we've always kind of looked to mainland Europe... Basically, we wanna go everywhere.
Tangra Mega Rock: And what shold we say — is PARADISE LOST a metal band or a goth metal band?

Nick Holmes: We kind of raised goth metal, you know. That's a very liberal term nowadays and... Actually, I don't mind calling us either. As long as no one says we're a country and western band, I don't have a problem.

Tangra Mega Rock: PARADISE LOST are going on tour in the USA this autumn with NIGHTWISH, and we were surprised to see that you'll be supporting them, although you're the older band...

Nick Holmes: Yeah, we're established and we've been around for a very long time, but NIGHTWISH are a very successful band right now. I mean, they can pull a crowd we could never even dream of pulling in America, so I think we're very fortunate to be on tour with them.

Read the entire interview at this location. The interview can be downloaded as an MP3 audio file here.