Host: Fear Of Tomorrow
It takes a lot to build up a signature sound, and even more to throw it out of the window. In the mid-90s, PARADISE LOST were flying high with their brand of hook-heavy metal set against a luscious gothic atmosphere, which earned them the reputation as one of the modern standard bearers of British metal. A gradual evolution in sound became a sharp left turn with 1999s album Host, a dark synthpop work that had much more in common with DEPECHE MODE than with doom metal. A controversial departure at the time, the passage of time has seen the album re-evaluated as a cult favourite, and now lent its name to a new project in the same mould by the writing partnership of PARADISE LOST’s two creative engines Greg Mackintosh and Nick Holmes.
“We had the idea of doing something along the lines of the Host album at least five years ago,” explains singer and lyricist Holmes. “Greg sent a bit of music and we bashed a few ideas together, but we just had to shelve them because of work we had for PARADISE LOST and [our side projects] STRIGOI and BLOODBATH.” Like many creative endeavours of the last few years, the genesis of HOST’s debut album IX was assisted-at-birth by the Covid lockdown. “It wasn’t until the pandemic that we had the time to concentrate more. I don’t think we would have had an album done by now if it weren’t for it,” Holmes admits.
With both gentlemen having spent the last ten or so years rediscovering their appetites for extreme metal, IX sees them revisiting their knack for pop structures and accessible hooks. For Holmes, this harks back to the synth-heavy music that he grew up listening to. “There were some songs in the 80s that I didn’t particularly like, but their hooks are so strong that you just never forget them. I tried to do some of that on this album – to let a vocal melody line completely dominate the song to the point where the music almost takes a back seat to it.” This goal certainly shines through in goth club banger Tomorrow’s Sky, and the driving electro-rock of Hiding From Tomorrow which experiments with different vocal lines over the same pulsating backbeat.
Those same songs bear one of the leitmotifs of the record, as Holmes illuminates. “I am fascinated by the idea of ‘tomorrow’, in particular as I grow older, because you don’t know how many of those you have left. Regardless of who you are or where you are, everyone has this same thing where they don’t know what’s around the corner. I find that aspect of life fascinating and alarming at the same time.” Though it was an enabler, Holmes shares that the pandemic was not a particular influence on this sentiment and other ideas he explored in the lyrics. “It doesn’t actually matter what’s going on in the outside world when I’m writing lyrics. I have to be in a certain frame of mind to put pen to paper. If I’m feeling down or depressed, that’s not a creative time for me at all. But the lyrics were never going to be happy anyway.”
One aspect in which ‘tomorrow’ holds fewer surprises these days, is in signalling how a new musical release is going to sound. It was this that contributed to the strength of backlash that the original Host album received when it was released in 1999. Reflecting on how things have changed, Holmes says that “in those days when you did an album, it was like a bolt out of the blue. [As a listener], I enjoyed that because you never knew what you were going to get – often you were disappointed, and often you were surprised.” To the core of PARADISE LOST’s following, that surprise was initially unpleasant, with many rejecting the complete shedding of their metal skin. “That element of surprise is completely gone now. It would have been interesting to see how it would have gone down if more people were online back then. Our web page would have exploded, I think,” Holmes quips.
Non-metal projects by metal artists don’t have a great history of successfully crossing over, perhaps due to their association with the heavier genres. HOST do not lose any sleep about this, however: “For us, it’s about writing songs for ourselves, and if we like it, there’s a chance that hopefully someone else will too. We’ve kept that mentality through our entire career.” In this, they have been richly justified. The years have given 1999’s Host a cult-like sheen, and the rare outing of a live track from this record at PARADISE LOST gigs is warmly received. While HOST are not planning any live performances at this time, Holmes relays that the years of experience have taught him to never say never, and jokingly adds that their manager will surely be on their back about it. “We can’t be bothered to get a band together, so we might just play like the PET SHOP BOYS,” Holmes laughs.
Whether HOST becomes something that the duo regularly return to or stays as a one-off project, there is much to enjoy about what has come out of it so far. At once celebrating a unique album and period in the history of their illustrious main band PARADISE LOST, and showcasing two veterans of the metal scene who are still driven to experiment, IX once again proves that no matter what genre, Greg Mackintosh and Nick Holmes are incapable of releasing something not worth your while.
IX is out now via Nuclear Blast Records.
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