CRUSTY CLIP OF THE WEEK - PARADISE LOST 'THE LAST TIME'

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by Andrew Wilhelm (Denver)

Gothic metal. Now there's a genre that didn't age well. Seriously, when was the last time someone handed you a gothic metal album that you thought was going to change the game forever? Most of the "Peaceville Three" - My Dying Bride, Anathema and Paradise Lost - reached their creative peaks in the early-to-mid 90s. And when it comes to third-rate ripoffs, wigger slam is more fun than some dudes in a South Dakota trailer park dressing themselves in flowy shirts and pleather, getting some horsefaced girl to play keys, and using tired references to succubi and dark chambers as metaphors for convenience store graveyard shifts.

That doesn't mean we can't reminisce of the better days, like lovers forlorn graced by roses and death.

The below clip is Paradise Lost's video for "The Last Time," off of their 1995 album Draconian Times. That record, and this song especially, was a transitional one - poppier than the dark Gothic, but nowhere near as commercial as the material to come. The chorus hook wouldn't sound out of place on a Cure single. But Nick Holmes' tenor and the guitar crunch keep this song firmly in the realm of metal, though. More importantly, you gotta love (or mourn?) the band performing not only in shallow water next to a graveyard gate, but in a padded cell too. So goth!