PARADISE LOST's GREGOR MACKINTOSH Names His Three 'Desert Island' Albums

In a new interview with Czech Republic's Metal & Rock Zone, guitarist Gregor Mackintosh of British gothic metal pioneers PARADISE LOST was asked to name the three albums he would take if he was banished to a desert island. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Well, one of them's pretty easy. It's got to be the first CANDLEMASS album, 'Epicus Doomicus [Metallicus]'... There's no 100% album for me, but that's ... There's no real filler on it to me. Every bit has something. And it's where I kind of stole a lot of my lead guitar tone from. Especially on [the song] 'Crystal Ball', the solo. It's kind of, like, 'I love that. I wonder how he got that.' And for years I was chasing it, and then I gave up 'cause it was in the guy's fingers. But then it becomes part of your sound maybe. So, yeah, CANDLEMASS's first album. I like lots of different kinds of music now, but if you're talking about the 18-year-old me, when you get into music, it burns into you. It'd have to be a TROUBLE album. It'd have to be 'Psalm 9' probably."

As for his third pick, Gregor said: "It's a tough one, but me and [PARADISE LOST vocalist] Nick [Holmes] used to live together. Right at the start of the band, we used to share a house. And our Saturday-night going-out music, to get ready, to get the hair big and all the rest of it, was CARNIVORE 'Retaliation'. So we'd put that on full blast. And we'd be getting ready, and he'd be in full brown leather, I'd be in full black leather. And then we'd go out and wait for the bus with loads of old women, to get the bus into town."

This past February, Mackintosh revealed that he was going through some "health issues" which had resulted in him losing a significant amount of weight.

PARADISE LOST is continuing to tour in support of its 17th album, "Ascension", which came out last September via Nuclear Blast Records. The band's first LP in five years, following 2020's critically acclaimed "Obsidian", was produced by Mackintosh and mixed/mastered by Lawrence Mackrory.

More than three decades into their career, and with over two million albums sold, PARADISE LOST remain the undisputed kings of metal's dark side. Formed in Halifax in 1988, the band quickly became noted as the pioneers of gothic metal through their early groundbreaking albums like 1991's aptly titled "Gothic", a mixture of heaviness intertwined with shadowy melody and atmosphere.

Never a group to remain creatively static, across their career they've explored a myriad of avenues of dark music, from sludgy doom-death roots, to conquering the metal mainstream with the enormous, lush sounds of 1995's "Draconian Times", to more experimental, electronic leanings, leaving an influence on a trail of artists as varied as CRADLE OF FILTH, HIM, GATECREEPER and CHELSEA WOLFE.