Just how many times can you see a band in a single year before getting bored with them?
Four times is apparently not the number, as we were faithfully walking up to the Main Stage of Metalcamp before Paradise Lost was going to lay down the law over the Slovenian crowd.

“How are you all doing?”
- Nick Holmes (vocals)

Doomsday bells were ringing out between the Alps as an intro for this English quintet, who sadly proved that even though fans weren’t getting tired of them, they could still become road weary and show up with a devil-may-care attitude. Thus feigning an interest by opening with the above remark, the posture and attitude of the vocalist told all too clearly that he in fact didn’t give a rats’ ass either way.
While I’m well aware that this is the sort of thing that happens with Paradise Lost from time to time, it still saddened me because they have had such a long stretch of great shows now that I thought we were past that sort of thing. But no, apparently not completely...

“How would you like a song from the latest album? No? Tough shit, ‘cause we’re playing it anyway.”
- Holmes (vocals)

On the other hand, how much did they have to rejoice about? Paradise Lost had pulled the smallest crowd of the day counting the bands I had seen, and the ones who were there mostly just stood still and watched, with the odd arm being raised once in a while.
Until the third song of the set, Erased, came on that is, at which time the audience finally woke up and went to action! It was as if they collectively decided that they needed to pull themselves together for this to go anywhere, and the band surely wasn’t going to do it for them. Said and done, a loud rhythmic clapping began to the beat of the song, and this in turn led to some headbanging – now we were moving!
The unexpected raise in the energy level didn’t go unnoticed by the band which was also affected by it, and suddenly things went very fast! No, of course I don’t mean that they played any faster, but they opened up to let the audience in, and actually began having fun themselves as well, and suddenly everything was so good again! It’s amazing how fast you can forgive and forget in certain situations...

Now that the party had started more and more people were willing to come down to the stage and join in the fun – at this time there were “oh-oh-oh” chants being sung, devil horns were raised to the sky, and hair was being swung wildly, just the type of metal crowd any band would wish for basically.
Luckily, instead of continuing down the beaten path, Paradise Lost was not late in showing its appreciation of this. Normally, my props go out to Aaron Aedy as he is always one cool cat on the stage, but this day my respect went to Holmes and Gregor Mackintosh. Aedy and Stephen Edmondson were doing their usual bit, and it was nice to see Adrian Erlandsson back behind the drums even if I had also enjoyed Jeff Singer’s guest appearance at the Wacken show, but Holmes and Mackintosh really went out of their way to make up for the slow start of the show! Never before have I seen either one of them so eager to get in contact with the crowd, getting out on the edge of the stage, and in Holmes’ case using his mic-stand to point at people to better the personal eye contact.
As the band was getting more and more comfortable, they also started improvising a bit with their music, which further added to the fun – for instance, in As I Die the chorus was sometimes changed for “as Satan dies” and “into the void”, whereas Fear Of Impending Hell was roughened up a bit by changing the lyric “now it’s over” to “it’s fucking over”. Its small things like this that keeps things interesting for the people who listen a lot to a band.

“Thanks for staying tuned”
- Holmes (vocals)

After some more songs, Paradise Lost arrived at the moment where it was time to pack it in, but not before showering us with memorabilia in the form of drum sticks and guitar picks. Incidentally, Mackintosh was the last one to leave the stage, as he was too caught up in bidding us a final farewell.
So, in the end Paradise Lost delivered one sneaky concert at Metalcamp this year – after shattering my dreams of a good time in the beginning, they managed to completely turn things around and end right back on the top again. Awesome.

Setlist:

Widow
Honesty In Death
Erased
Forever Failure
Soul Courageous
Tragic Idol
Pity The Sadness
One Second
As I Die
Fear Of Impending Hell
The Enemy
Enchantment
In This We Dwell
Faith Divides Us – Death Unites Us
Say Just Words