“We’ve been coming here for 25 years and still can’t speak German, we apologise for that.”
- Nick Holmes (vocals)

This wasn’t the last reference we would hear about the bands age, and it’s members getting older, but the paradox of this is that the band has never been more vital than they are at this point in their career, something that we certainly also got to see here at Rockharz.
To follow suit with this point, the band started out with one of their quite old tracks, Widow, and even though the sound proved to be quite horrendous it quickly grabbed of hold of the crowd and sent the show into a flying start; after this it was time for something completely different, and at the same time completely new with Honesty In Death, the first song from their new Tragic Idol record to receive the video treatment.
The setlist would continue to change back and forth between selected hits of their golden era in the 90ies (Icon through One Second) and their later days post-electronic, return to hard era (In Requiem and Tragic Idol); as such the setlist was not open for many surprises, but as there were many songs from the new album it still felt fresh to me. There were a couple of songs outside this range that made it as well, of course we couldn’t go without As I Die, but why oh why Faith Divides Us – Death Unites Us was completely left out I will never understand!

Still, the band was swinging, and the sound crept slowly towards acceptable; the day was also fine, and with the hit parade given it was hard to complain.
I’m a hopeless fanboy for the positive energy that Aaron Aedy always seem so full of when performing, but I can’t go without adding a word or two of praise for Gregor Mackintosh and Nick Holmes as well; Mackintosh have become a much more vital and powerful part of the Paradise Lost live experience in the last few years compared to what he’s done in a long time before this, and even though not all of his comments were very nice on the surface (though I’m sure they were said with love, deep down inside somewhere) Holmes still seemed to be in a good mood this day and was quite talkative, and when he had some time to spare, he would tease Adrian Erlandsson by holding his cymbals so they wouldn’t give a proper sound.

If Holmes was making more sounds than usual, then it was the opposite with the crowd.
Between songs the Germans let up roars of appreciation and applause in multitude (especially Forever Failure had a nice clap-along in the beginning), but during the performance of the songs, things quieted down, and except for some headbangers in the front, people would settle for enjoying the depressive Brits in silent awe. Being there, you could tell that not a note was missed by the crowd, and it looked like the feeling extended to the stage and the band as well, given the performance I praised above, even though I could worry that they maybe could have thought it was out of boredom or lack of interest that we were as still as we were. Well, I wasn’t; having had a few by this time I was happy to sing along in a very broken voice, and I would like to take this opportunity to apologise to the people standing closest to me...

Finishing the set, we got a wide smile out of Mackintosh and saw Aedy leave the stage while merrily skipping along like a young boy on his way to his first day of school.
With this great performance over and done with, I could only praise the metal gods that we would be so lucky as to see Paradise Lost no less than three times in all during this summer! Bring on the next one!

Setlist:

Widow
Honesty In Death
Erased
As I Die
Tragic Idol
Forever Failure
One Second
Embers Fire
In This We Dwell
The Enemy
Fear Of Impending Hell
Say Just Words