Your thoughts on Paradise Lost

[SymphonyXV]

For 3 years I didn't want to listen to it because I just wanted to listen to V but last week I listened to it all the way through and liked it more than I thought I would. My favorite song by far is Eve of Seduction I couldn't stop repeating it. I also loved in Domination when Russel sings "Hail the horrors on hell we sanctify". They actually came to my town in 2007 and I missed them Hopefully next time they'll come back.

On subject what's your guy's thoughts on this masterpiece?

 

[Krowsnest]

I don't understand how you can skip over and album for 3 years..... I mean it took me a few months before I heard Damnation game but PL is their most well-known album....

As a whole, I like it. I just hope future albums aren't as heavy. I mean maybe its just me but every new metal album gets heavier and heavier and I kinda wish SymphX would revert back to V and Divine Wings days

But anyway, the album sounds great played through as a whole (like V), but I would likely put it as my 3rd favorite album by the band

 

[Phanto]

I think it's their worst album and I can't listen too much to it before I have to switch over to something else. The title track and The Sacrifice are the 2 songs I listen to.

 

[RuRoRul]

Well I'm a fairly new Symphony X fan, and when I tried them out I listened to their most recent album which is obviously Paradise Lost. It remains my favourite album of them today, or maybe second to V. But you usually find the first album of a band that someone listens and really likes is their favourite (after all DWOT is the favourite of many fans).

Also, when you get a bands albums on hindsight, you can appreciate them in a different way than you do when you wait for it to come out. For example I can listen to Paradise Lost and not be bothered about the fact that it is the heaviest album since I can just listen to any of the others as well. But if you like a band and know its entire discography, then you'll have expectations for the next album to give you a little bit of everything. And when it inevitably highlights only some aspects of the band, some people might find it disappointing that it doesnt focus more on some other aspects.

But anyway, Paradise Lost is still about my favourite. Revelation is probably my favourite song excluding DWOT and The Odyssey, and a lot of the others are among my favourites. Paradise Lost and Eve Of Seduction are probably my next favourites, but really all the tracks are great - The Sacrifice and Set The World On Fire are probably my least favourite, but I still really like them. DWOT and The Odyssey have some of their best tracks, but in my opinion Paradise Lost is more consistent and has the fewest weak links. And it flows really well as an album, almost as well as V, making it great to listen to all the way through.

 

[razoredge]

sighs

 

[Ryan M.]

Songs in order of awesomeness (Just my opinion):

Sacrifice
Revelation
Eve of Seduction
Paradise Lost
Domination
Seven
The Walls of Babylon
Oculus Ex Inferni
Set The World on Fire
Serpent's Kiss

Overall:

Good album. Not their best in my opinion though. V, TiO, or DWoT would have to be the best for me!

 

[Detective Clarence Beauregard]

Considering that the band has played the entire album minus Seven and The Sacrifice live, it's obvious that they see those two as the weakest tracks. Seven would be cool live, though. But everyone has their own favorites.

 

[Ryan M.]

Considering that the band has played the entire album minus Seven and The Sacrifice live, it's obvious that they see those two as the weakest tracks. Seven would be cool live, though. But everyone has their own favorites.

A lot of people happen to like that song dude. Seriously it aint week. Slow does not always = week.

 

[Detective Clarence Beauregard]

A lot of people happen to like that song dude. Seriously it aint week. Slow does not always = week.

I never said it was weak. I simply said that by the band's choice of which PL songs to play live, THEY think it is weaker than the rest of the album. I happen to prefer Symphony X's slow, more progressive songs to their fast and heavy ones.

 

[BARBAROUSSE]

or may be ,for them , it 's just not good as a live song ...

 

[ToastedOveries]

Considering that the band has played the entire album minus Seven and The Sacrifice live, it's obvious that they see those two as the weakest tracks. Seven would be cool live, though. But everyone has their own favorites.

I would put these two as the weakest too in my opinion,

Overall, i think its a great album, on par with TO but not quite as good as V or DWOT.

 

[batera]

Considering that the band has played the entire album minus Seven and The Sacrifice live, it's obvious that they see those two as the weakest tracks. Seven would be cool live, though. But everyone has their own favorites.

or may be ,for them , it 's just not good as a live song ...

The band might be ambivalent between Seven and Eve of Seduction, but choose to play the latter because it's a bit slower. Not that they couldn't totally rock Seven, but it is a bit more demanding, especially for drums. Some songs are just more fun to play.

One thing to consider is, given how guitar-heavy PL is, that the songs on that album lose a lot more of their sound in the live show than maybe some other albums do, because MJR can't play the riffs underneath the solos at the same time. Think of how the band would sound if MJR hand-picked someone to play rhythm guitar underneath his leads...

As for the Sacrifice, it's a killer track but especially with all these 45-minute sets we've been seeing, they don't need another slower track. If the band ever did a 2-hour DVD with the works, I could easily see them pulling it out, as well as Candlelight Fantasia to put some slower breaks into the program. I don't think it's that they are "weak" tracks for the band...they obviously thought it was worth putting on there. What works live and what doesn't is more situational.

 

[The Stormbringer]

I've come to like the band's METAL mindset even more than their neo-classical/Prog one to be honest. T.O. has had a huuuuge revival for me in the last months, and I finally got around to listen to P.L. a little more closely. It's a great disc, very consistent with a couple of tracks that just flat out kill (Domination, The Walls Of Babylon). I'm not quite sure, but I think I like T.O. a little more still, the reason being the production... that's what a band should sound like going for stripped-to-the-bone metal. On the other hand, I haven't listened to their first two albums in ages and also can't really stomach the more classically-tinged stuff off of T.D.W.O.T. (Out Of The Ashes, The Witching Hour) anymore. Symphony X's current penchant for heaviness is a good thing for me.

 

[batera]

T.O. has had a huuuuge revival for me in the last months, and I finally got around to listen to P.L. a little more closely. It's a great disc, very consistent with a couple of tracks that just flat out kill (Domination, The Walls Of Babylon). I'm not quite sure, but I think I like T.O. a little more still, the reason being the production... that's what a band should sound like going for stripped-to-the-bone metal.

TIO has always been one of my favorite albums from the catalog as well. MJR seems not to like it as much because it was hurried and the production wasn't what he wanted for it, but ironically, I (and a few others, apparently) actually really like the sound and atmosphere of it...I think it sounds a bit more natural and earthy than the shinier production in some of the other albums. Looking Glass is one of the fan favorites of course, but the rest of the album has a lot of depth to it. Orion the Hunter was the first Symphony X song I ever heard and it remains to me a really nice mix of prog with a metal feel.

 

[The Stormbringer]

Yeah... most of what I wrote can also be said for Twilight In Olympus, whose sound I've always found warm and well-balanced. Definitely their unsung album.

 

[SymphonyXV]

I don't understand how you can skip over and album for 3 years..... I mean it took me a few months before I heard Damnation game but PL is their most well-known album....

As a whole, I like it. I just hope future albums aren't as heavy. I mean maybe its just me but every new metal album gets heavier and heavier and I kinda wish SymphX would revert back to V and Divine Wings days

But anyway, the album sounds great played through as a whole (like V), but I would likely put it as my 3rd favorite album by the band

Well I didn't listen in order, for me it was V then Odyssey then Twilight then Divine Wings then first album then damnation then pl. I really tried avoiding PL idk why.

 

[PurpleDink]

I never said it was weak. I simply said that by the band's choice of which PL songs to play live, THEY think it is weaker than the rest of the album. I happen to prefer Symphony X's slow, more progressive songs to their fast and heavy ones.

Most of the times songs are excluded from live performances is because they feel that said song will break the "flow" of the performance. Iron Maiden has this with Lonliness of the Long Distance Runner, ect.

 

[EyeballKid]

Most of the times songs are excluded from live performances is because they feel that said song will break the "flow" of the performance. Iron Maiden has this with Lonliness of the Long Distance Runner, ect.

You are completely correct, Rullo even explained this to myself and The Detective. However, I do agree that Seven is the weakest song on the album.

Also, it doesn't help Maiden that Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner is a pretty bad song.

 

[manticore999]

Definitely their weakest effort as far as I'm concerned. It's just 'me too' metal - appeals to the kiddies (who spend the most, so I guess that's the point) but other than the title track there's nothing really interesting on it.

 

[Prismatic Sphere]

I find that people who just discovered SX after latching on to nu-metal and thinking that was all there was, tend to like PL the best.

This is hardly surprising.