This year Paradise Lost has released their eleventh (!) record, called In Requiem and in support of it they did a European tour, ending in Tivoli, Utrecht. I was there to have a nice doomy and gothic Sunday.

 

Neurosonic opened tonight and most apparent were their fancy outfits and performance. Also the singers voice was quite extraordinary, it made sure that the rock with an industrial twist they played had this small flavour which can make things interesting. Unfortunately I could only witness their last two songs so we will continue with Eyes of Eden from Germany.

 

I must say that I pretty much despise bands fronted by a woman whose sound mainly exists of singing awfully long clean high notes. I was quickly bored and my hopes that Franziska Huth would compensate it with her appearance were in vain. Her static performance and small gentle movements, which I guess should be �elegant�, got me annoyed even more. Eyes of Eden�s music had some interesting heavy parts, but Franziska�s voice thin sound was no match for their music.

 

After this sheer torture it was finally time for some really impressive music, full of atmosphere. Paradise Lost opened with a song from their latest album, �The Enemy�; a song that ironically starts with a clean female vocal line! But in the case of Paradise Lost this could in no way harm the enormously powerful and compelling music. Paradise Lost is a band that always makes more than decent records, which sound keeps evolving slightly, in a very positive way. A song like �Praise Lamented Shade� is an excellent example of this; it was one of the most impressive songs of the evening. Of course also enough classics passed by and it was pretty cool that the audience got to choose whether they would play �Gothic� or �As I Die� by making as much noise as possible. This night the latter was the winner of the little contest and was obviously one of the overall favourites of the audience. I must notice that Nick Holmes didn�t always reach the deep vocal sounds as on the records, but overall Paradise Lost gave a very professional show, what one would expect of a band with such a history. It was an excellent ending of a hard working week.