PARADISE LOST is one of the "Peaceville Three" who created and defined Gothic Metal, along with MY DYING BRIDE and ANATHEMA. It was in early 1990 when their debut album "Lost Paradise" paved the way for an entire subgenre and the follow-ups "Gothic" (1991) and "Shades Of God" (1992) laid the foundations for their masterpieces "Icon" (1993) and "Draconian Times" (1995) which stand amongst the crown jewels of Metal history.

I consider "Icon" to be their top achievement but "Draconian Times" stands at a close second spot in my heart, so needless to say I was very happy to hear that they would perform a limited number of appearances celebrating its 5.1 Digital Sound Re-Release version and they booked the first three dates of the tour in Greece, two of which in Athens and one in Thessaloniki, so I got to see their opening show.

I arrived at Fuzz Club just in time for SCAR OF THE SUN to hit the stage. Immediately I noticed the two things that plague most Greek venues being present here as well. Mediocre sound and ventilation; the little sign at the entrance that said "The band kindly requests not to smoke in the area" seemed even more ironic.
The band performed songs from their debut album "A Series Of Unfortunate Concurrencies" (2008), such as "Disposable", "Swansong Of Senses", "Ode To A Failure", "8th Ocean Dried", "Gravity" and "Burn The Memory" from their self titled promo.

Sound wasn't that good to say the least and it was a shame when a guest vocalist tried grunting in place of DARK TRANQUILLITY's Mikael Stanne and instead all we got was silence. Voice was coming out of the monitor at the side of the stage so my wild guess is that the sound engineer was busy staring at the little blinking lights on the mixer trying to figure out why the bearded guy moves his mouth with no sound coming out.

SCAR OF THE SUN is a very interesting band and you should check them out, though I appreciated their music way more than the vocals, in all honesty but their overall appearance was rewarding, even though the sound wasn't helping much.

More than thirty minutes passed under the sounds of METALLICA's "…And Justice For All" (1988) when the lights dimmed and the keyboard intro from "Enchantment" sounded while the rest of the band entered the stage.

There's not much to be said about the songs that followed. We are talking about a classic that was performed to the best of the venues potentials, meaning that even though the band was quite professional, the sound wasn't the best possible.

Notice how I said "professional". Even though you couldn't find a flaw in their performance, it wasn't their best one compared to what I've seen in the past. Still, the level of such a band is so high, that my idea of an average PARADISE LOST performance exceeds by a long distance that of most bands so I can't think of anyone that was disappointed.

The band loosened up with each song and the crowd helped a lot since the venue was full and everyone was singing along the lyrics to the most well known songs of the album.

I heard some comments about the crowd not being so "lively" all the time but I'd like to remind that it was a Friday night, most people -including me- got there straight from their jobs and it was still a damn good crowd.

The first encore started with "Faith Divides Us – Death Unites Us" from their latest album with the same title. You can say what you want about the post "Draconian Times" era, but this song is pure PARADISE LOST and it was awesome watching it live.

My personal favorite followed which is non other that "True Belief" and I have the feeling that I actually spit blood while yelling along the lyrics. True story. Two more songs from their modern era, "One Second" and "Say Just Words" took us to the second short break.

The last encore started with what seems to be (and in all fairness) one of every fan's favorites and it always makes people go mental. The keyboard intro to "Mr.Crowley" was followed by the intro to "The Enemy" at which point Nick Holmes said "Wait, wait, stop it" and decided to give the fans what they were cheering for.

So "Sweetness" it was. This song is just a sample of how awesome this band is. I mean when you don't have room for such a monumental song in your full album and it has to be included in an EP, that means a lot on its own.

The last song was a multiple choice that the answer seemed predetermined from the beginning. Nick left it to the public to decide which song would be next. So no matter how much we screamed for the first choice which was "Eternal", the other choice received a considerably warmer welcome and it was expectable since "As I Die" is the song that brought them wider acceptance after it was voted as "Single of the Week" by METALLICA on MTV Europe.

The vocals that sounded significantly more brutal than the softer live versions I've heard over the years were a nice surprise but I still believe there should be no contest between these two songs but they should both be a part of the set-list as they're a major part of PARADISE LOST's history.

In any case it was definitely a night to remember and the Brits delivered a great show. I can only wish that they'll do this again one day with "Icon".

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