“Not Going to Start Writing Happy Songs About Dancing” — Nick Holmes on the ‘Ascension’ of Paradise Lost

English Gothic Metal band Paradise Lost have been part of heavy music for over thirty years. With Ascension, they add another chapter to their catalog.

We spoke with Nick Holmes about the band’s journey, the new album, and what it means to still be making music together.

Horror on Screen and Everyday Escapes

Holmes starts by sharing what he’s been watching lately. “The Gilded Age,” he says, describing it as “the American version of Downton Abbey, very light, amusing, and it doesn’t stay with you after you finish watching it.” He adds another choice, too. “On a more heavy metal note, I would say probably Alien Earth is the other one that I’m watching as well.”

When it comes to horror, his enthusiasm sharpens. “Yeah, absolutely. I’m a big fan. Since I was a little kid, I’ve been really into it.” He explains that he is picky with films, often enjoying them even when they fall short of brilliance, simply because of his love for the genre.

Asked for a recommendation, he doesn’t hesitate. “I always kind of go the same one, which is probably The Hereditary. I kind of always draw that one, because in the last however many years since that came out, I still think of that as a kind of benchmark film for being genuinely kind of unnerving, you know, in a modern kind of horror context.”

From Bradford’s Small Scene to Global Stages

Looking back to the band’s start, Holmes recalls their teenage years: “There was a heavy metal rock club called the Frog and Toad in Bradford. And we all used to kind of go there.” It was a small circle, and that helped them bond. “It was a quiet niche market for me, and especially the more extreme side of music. There was not many people into it at that time. So the people that were into it, it kind of became their own little club.”

They were just teenagers then, united by passion. “That’s all we thought about, you know, the minute I go, I woke up to the minute I went to sleep. That’s all I thought about was metal and death metal.” With that shared obsession, they built Paradise Lost and kept it alive across decades.

Writing Ascension and Revisiting the Past

Talking about Ascension, Holmes says the band holds itself to strict standards. “It’s first and foremost, we kind of set the bar very high. You know, we are our own biggest critics on every level.” The pandemic slowed things down, but it also gave them space to re-record Icon. “I think it was quite productive to do that. It kind of reminded us of how we wrote songs when we were in our 20s.”

Every new record feels like a clean slate. “After all these years, it’s always hard to get the ball rolling. When you start with a blank canvas, we never really look back at what we’ve done in the past. Once it starts, it’s definitely, you get there eventually, which we have done, I guess.”

Though people often talk of a “return to roots,” Holmes frames it differently. “I mean, like I said, I think on this album, you can hear elements of the Shades of God album, you can hear elements of the Icon album. But I mean, it’s never going to be a case of trying to just recreate that, it’s just a case of tipping the hat maybe here and there.”

Songwriting : Grief and Hope

Discussing “Tyrant’s Serenade,” Holmes reflects on its meaning. “With that song, it’s about when you’ve, without getting too kind of downbeat, when if you lose someone, as the seasons change, you kind of remember them in that season. The tyrant is the pain, and the celebration is that he celebrates your pain. So it’s kind of like an outside force.”

He prefers to write with feeling rather than strict grammar. “If it feels melancholic, it’s kind of on the right path. I don’t necessarily want to feel miserable, but I don’t mind a little bit of melancholia, with a little bit, a twinkle of hope.” This approach has defined the band’s voice. “We’re not going to start writing happy songs about dancing and things,” he adds with a dry laugh.

Soundscapes and Other Projects

For Holmes, starting new songs is always daunting. “It’s when you start writing, it’s really difficult. 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 mountainside.”

Technology has also changed things. “Our demos are not particularly dissimilar to the album version, because we take the demos really as far as we pretty much can get them.” Still, he admits that demo fever can be tough. “Everyone starts to get like demo fever, where they just want to hear it sound exactly like the demo, which is a real demo fever, and can be a nightmare.”

Outside Paradise Lost, Holmes has worked with Bloodbath and Host. “With Bloodbath it was a little bit strange at first, but when I kind of got used to how I’m doing, how I’m going to approach the singing style, I did a Bloodbath show and a Paradise Lost show in one day once, which was kind of a bit heavy going.” The key, he says, is discipline. “Just make sure I get some sleep.”

On stage, challenges don’t end. “The biggest problem is you don’t get to sound check. Sometimes you have to work out the problems as you’re playing, which sucks, but unfortunately that’s the reality.”

Rapid Fire with Nick Holmes

To wrap things up, we asked Holmes some fun rapid-fire questions about the band. Here’s his two cents:

• Most organized: Aaron Aedy
• Most laid-back: Stephen Edmondson
• Biggest party animal (in the past): Nick Holmes
• Always finding new music: Gregor Mackintosh
• Best dancer: Nick Holmes
• Most optimistic: Aaron Aedy
• Best communicator: Jeff Singer
• Busiest: All of them equally

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Holmes leaves with a simple message for the fans:

“Just really hope you like the album, check it out, and hope to see you on tour at some point next year.”

After decades together, Paradise Lost doesn’t lean on big claims. They focus on the music, the bond between them, and the people waiting to hear their songs live. Ascension continues that story by being an album that is heavy, melancholic, and rooted in the same passion that brought them together in Bradford years ago.