As I Die

This was the year when the band was extending their influences passed the sardonic doom / death they were going for since the ‘80s. They started to blend more melody, which in turn led to a refined sound not far away from melodic death, but not instilled in death metal fully anymore, either. Anyway, “As I Die” appears on CD pressings (don’t think that’ll be hard to find), but “Rape Of Virtue” and “Death Walks Behind You” didn’t make it, which isn’t too bad since Shades Of God would have become too long by then.

Come to think of it, this single is already longer than necessary. First off, “As I Die” and “Rape Of Virtue” aren’t that stellar, so it’s not like anyone’s missing out on them. You get “As I Die” with most copies of Shades Of God anyway, and “Death Walks Behind You” is cool, but not anything spectacular. The live song, oddly, sounds pretty clear and rusty (“Eternal” being a song from Gothic). Expect pitchy, raw death metal for the live song, harmonic doom for “As I Die” and “Rape Of Virtue”, and doomy hard rock for the Atomic Rooster cover. It’s good variety, beating out the last Paradise Lost single in that respect.

Holmes yells hoarsely (harsher James Hetfield), screams vulgarly, and growls menacingly. He isn’t as satisfying as on Gothic, but he doesn’t fall flat on his performance like later on. The guitars play with burning distortion eating away the air; a very dreadful, raw sound. What keeps this from sounding like older Paradise Lost is Mackintosh’ enhanced taste for melody, pushing songs like “As I Die” into harmonic doom realms or, like I said earlier, melodic death metal. The bass back up is always gratifying, following the rhythm with a bellowing husk of a tone. The drumming pulverizes, but the kit is stale, especially with those tacky snares. Not the kind of tone I expect with beefy doom metal, and certainly not one I like.

Slow tempos, bashful drumming, and brutal riffs with harsh vocals. Doom / death isn’t a hard genre to play, but it’s hard to compose something that’s worthy of being played. Funeral doom metal has it the worst, or drone, when it comes to this, but for Paradise Lost, change was needed to stay alive. That’s the kind of band they were – to look to the future and realize that +10 albums of the same material just wasn’t going to cut it. Although singles have a little more leeway, this wouldn’t be the last one to put the band to the test.