Nick Holmes Hopeful He’ll Finish Writing the Next Paradise Lost Record Next Year
Fans of gothic doom metal outfit Paradise Lost will have something to look forward to next year, as songwriting efforts are underway and if Nick Holmes has any say, will be done in 2024.
During a recent interview with Portuguese metal news outlet Metal Global (as transcribed by Blabbermouth), Holmes said that work was being done on Paradise Lost’s follow up to their 2020 album Obsidian. In fact, the band’s been hard at work on the album since this past summer.
“We started working on some songs. Then we started the summer festival season, and it just got kind of lost in the festivals. It’s nice to allocate a period of downtime when you can write because it’s hard to keep your head on one thing when you keep having to pack a bag and then get on an airplane and go and do a gig and you’ve gotta rehearse for the shows. It’s just nice to scratch some time for that.
“So hopefully at the beginning of next year, we can have a few months downtime so we can actually get working more on the album. But we’ve got a few songs done. I think we’ve got a few songs done; we need to review them. So, yeah, we’ll hopefully write an album next year, anyway. Whether it’s gonna be recorded [next year], I don’t know, but hopefully at least written.”
Holmes, who also fronts Bloodbath and Host, is no stranger to talking about his writing process. Last year, he shared how writing death metal lyrics for Bloodbath feels “like another instrument to me,” stating that the lyrics don’t necessarily have to make sense during the writing process — or even in the finished product so much — while writing death metal.
For Paradise Lost, however, that’s likely to not be the case at all, since their music is more melodic. As a writer, Holmes told Metal Global that he prefers to have the music in place when he’s writing vocals and lyrics, saying those tracks act as a “springboard to write lyrics to.”
“I always like how lyrics, how words sound on certain parts of songs. And that’s always something I’ve admired about certain bands over the years. I’m not particularly interested in hearing stories in songs, although sometimes it’s nice to hear that, but it’s more about how, particularly metal, for me, it’s more about how the songs sound at a certain time, how the lyrics sound at a certain time and the words. I mean, I can write without music, but I prefer to have something to kind of bounce off, really.”
With writing likely not done until sometime in 2024, we could expect to possibly see a new Paradise Lost record either much later in the year or as far as 2025. Only time will tell.
