Paradise Lost: Seventeenth Album ‘Ascension’ Announced with Single ‘Silence Like The Grave’

British Paradise Lost has announced the release of their seventeenth studio album, ‘Ascension,’ scheduled for September 19, 2025, through Nuclear Blast Records. The announcement was accompanied by the release of a new video single, ‘Silence Like The Grave,’ which debuted on June 6 across the label’s official platforms. Directed by Ash Pears, the video reinforces the band’s established gothic visual language, presenting a restrained and shadow-saturated narrative that aligns with the song’s mournful tone and melodic density.

Produced by guitarist Gregor Mackintosh and mastered by Lawrence Mackrory, ‘Ascension’ was recorded at Black Planet Studios in the United Kingdom and NBS Studios in Sweden. The album follows a five-year interval since 2020’s ‘Obsidian’ and introduces a final performance by departing drummer Guido Montanarini. As initial press coverage circulates across major genre outlets, the release signals Paradise Lost’s continued presence in the European gothic and doom metal arena ahead of their scheduled autumn tour.

‘Ascension,’ The Seventeenth Album

Paradise Lost will release their seventeenth studio album, titled ‘Ascension,’ on September 19, 2025, through Nuclear Blast Records. The announcement arrives five years after ‘Obsidian’ (2020), marking the longest interval between full-length studio albums in the band’s thirty-five-year history. While the group has traversed a spectrum of stylistic territory—from their early death-doom origins to periods of electronic experimentation and gothic refinement—’Ascension’ appears to reaffirm their alignment with the austere intensity that has come to define their later material.

This latest chapter in the band’s discography emerges amid renewed interest in doom-adjacent genres across the European metal circuit. As peers such as My Dying Bride, Katatonia, and Swallow the Sun continue to engage themes of grief, loss, and spiritual fatigue, Ascension positions itself not as a deviation but as a contribution to a broader tonal continuum. Its timing—reintroducing Paradise Lost into a critical landscape increasingly shaped by questions of artistic continuity and sonic austerity—has already prompted renewed commentary among longstanding listeners and newer audiences alike.

Produced by guitarist Gregor Mackintosh, the album was recorded at Black Planet Studios in East Yorkshire and Wasteland Studios in Sweden. Mixing and mastering were handled by Lawrence Mackrory, known for his work with Katatonia and Decapitated, whose engineering brings clarity without sacrificing the record’s structural density. Vocalist Nick Holmes remains at the forefront, joined by longtime members Aaron Aedy on rhythm guitar, Stephen Edmondson on bass, and the returning drummer Jeff Singer, whose reentry followed the departure of Guido Montanarini earlier in 2025. The production decisions reflect a deliberate emphasis on structural economy and tonal focus and tonal consistency rather than dramatic reinvention.

While neither the band nor their label has presented ‘Ascension’ as a conceptual departure, public statements emphasize its introspective direction and textural minimalism. The record’s construction appears grounded in the group’s established palette: somber tonal frameworks, layered pacing, and an overarching sense of emotional gravity. Rather than offering a revision of their aesthetic framework, ‘Ascension’ refines what Paradise Lost has long established—a musical language that continues to evolve quietly within its own architecture.

‘Silence Like The Grave’: A Preliminary Statement

Released in May 2025, ‘Silence Like The Grave’ serves as the first publicly available material from ‘Ascension’ and offers a measured preview of the album’s sonic atmosphere. The single was accompanied by a video directed by Ash Pears, whose longstanding collaboration with Paradise Lost has helped define their visual identity across multiple release cycles. Presented in subdued monochrome and filmed in a minimally lit studio environment, the video avoids narrative framing, opting instead for a stark performance style that foregrounds the band’s presence without theatrical elaboration.

The track adheres to the slower tempos and harmonic austerity that have become hallmarks of the band’s later work. Holmes’s vocal performance—gravelled yet discernible—oscillates between lament and detachment, delivered over restrained instrumentation that privileges negative space as much as texture. Guitars, handled by Mackintosh and Aedy, engage in layered, deliberate phrasing, while Singer’s drumming resists technical embellishment in favor of accenting dynamic shifts with precision.

The song revisits familiar terrain: emotional collapse, spiritual ambiguity, and a haunted awareness of impermanence. However, there is little indication of overt metaphor or conceptual framework beyond the evocation of mood. The absence of spectacle in both the composition and its visual accompaniment suggests a conscious decision to position ‘Ascension’ within the internal rather than the theatrical—a mode that has characterized the band’s most enduring material.

Reception of the video and single has been broadly positive within the band’s fan communities, with commentary emphasizing its continuity with past works rather than innovation. Media outlets including Kerrang! and Outburn noted the track’s textural restraint and thematic familiarity, drawing comparisons to material from ‘Obsidian’ and ‘Medusa.’ As a lead statement, ‘Silence Like The Grave’ neither provokes nor disrupts, but instead offers an audible foothold into the reflective terrain of the full album.

Release Structure and Label Infrastructure

‘Ascension’ will be released worldwide through Nuclear Blast Records, a long-standing affiliate of Paradise Lost and a dominant force in the distribution of extreme and traditional metal genres. The label’s announcement confirmed that the album will be available across multiple physical and digital formats, including standard CD, digital download, streaming platforms, and a range of vinyl editions—among them limited marbled and gatefold pressings. These variants are being distributed through Nuclear Blast’s official store and affiliated retail partners, with pre-orders launched in May 2025.

The decision to engage Nuclear Blast for this release continues a relationship that has offered both structural reliability and editorial latitude. In recent years, the label has recalibrated its catalogue to foreground established acts while maintaining selective support for emerging projects. Within this framework, Paradise Lost retains a distinct position: not as heritage content, but as a consistent producer of new material that still commands transnational interest.

The physical presentation of ‘Ascension’ adheres to the band’s established visual minimalism, with cover artwork rendered in desaturated tones and centered on abstract celestial iconography. The design does not deviate from the aesthetic template set by earlier releases but instead reinforces a continuity of tone and presentation that extends across their Nuclear Blast-era catalogue. No deluxe or expanded editions have been confirmed as of June 2025, although limited vinyl runs suggest a targeted approach toward collectors and long-term followers.

Digital promotion for ‘Ascension’ has been structured around controlled rollout rather than saturation. The lead single was disseminated via YouTube and select streaming platforms, while press engagement has remained limited to formal announcements and a handful of coordinated premieres. This restrained strategy aligns with Paradise Lost’s broader public presence, which privileges continuity and audience retention over algorithmic circulation. The emphasis remains on maintaining a stable communicative line between the band and its audience—one shaped more by longevity than trend responsiveness.

The Ascension of Europe 2025 – Part 1 Tour

Paradise Lost will support the release of ‘Ascension’ with a European tour scheduled to begin October 9, 2025, in Manchester, United Kingdom, and conclude on November 6 in Antwerp, Belgium. Titled Ascension of Europe 2025 – Part I, the itinerary comprises twenty-six dates across the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, and additional central and eastern European locations.

The tour includes full United Kingdom coverage in its opening week, with shows in Manchester, Wolverhampton, Newcastle, Glasgow, Nottingham, Bristol, Southampton, and London from October 9 to 17. From there, the schedule shifts to continental Europe with appearances in Lille, Paris, Lyon, Cologne, Luxembourg, Dornbirn, Padova, Munich, Prague, Zagreb, and Vienna through the end of October. A final cluster of dates in November includes Budapest, Geneva, Nürnberg, Utrecht, and Antwerp.

Messa is confirmed as the primary support act for the entire tour. Additional support will vary by region: Lacrimas Profundere joins for select dates in France, Germany, and Austria; High Parasite appears during the central European leg from Munich to Antwerp. This structured rotation of guests emphasizes genre compatibility—Messa’s doom-laden sonics and Lacrimas Profundere’s gothic melancholia align tonally with Paradise Lost’s catalogue—while introducing younger acts into a well-established circuit.

Tour visuals echo the album’s subdued and esoteric design, combining religious iconography with painterly distortion. Venues span mid-size clubs and theatre halls, suggesting a scale calibrated for both long-term followers and audiences engaged with the broader doom and gothic metal resurgence. Tickets are available through the usual national outlets, though no region-specific bundles or exclusive merchandise have been announced to date.

By staging the Ascension tour across a geographically expansive itinerary, Paradise Lost underscores its logistical and artistic continuity within a live circuit increasingly defined by economic volatility and shifting audience expectations. Rather than anchoring their presence in retrospective appeal, the band’s touring activity affirms an ongoing relationship with mid-scale European venues and a sustained listener base attuned to gradual, mood-driven expression. The tour functions not as a revival, but as an operational extension of the album’s structure—intentional, measured, and embedded in the present.

Continuity and Cultural Position

Paradise Lost’s release of ‘Ascension’ arrives in a cultural environment increasingly attentive to the long arcs of influence and endurance in extreme music. With a career spanning more than three decades, the band remains an active creative force rather than a retrospective citation. Their capacity to navigate stylistic change without abandoning core structural elements—mid-paced melancholia, lyrical solemnity, and tonal minimalism—has allowed them to remain active contributors rather than static references in the genre’s canon.

The five-year interval between ‘Obsidian’ (2020) and ‘Ascension’ is the longest in their discography, a gap shaped in part by global disruptions and the shifting dynamics of album production and touring logistics. However, this temporal distance has not reduced their visibility. The band’s presence across festival lineups, curated tours, and consistent re-engagement by new generations of listeners speaks to a durability that extends beyond nostalgia. Within metal’s broader historiography, Paradise Lost represents one of the few acts that helped define death-doom in its formative stage while also transitioning into gothic metal without severing ties to either tradition.

Their alignment with Nuclear Blast Records—one of the most prominent labels in European heavy music—reinforces the institutional backing that has sustained their reach across markets. At the same time, the absence of overt stylistic recalibration in ‘Ascension’ suggests a refusal to pursue relevance through novelty. Instead, the record appears to operate as a quiet reiteration of aesthetic continuity—delivered not as revivalism, but as a reminder that longevity in this domain is often built on refinement rather than rupture.

Audience response to the lead single ‘Silence Like The Grave’ has indicated that the band’s creative direction continues to resonate. Online discussion around the song—premiered via Nuclear Blast’s platforms—highlighted its structural minimalism and visual severity, aligning closely with fan expectations of what Paradise Lost offers in the current era. While no radical transformation is evident, the song’s reception suggests that continuity itself holds significant value in the current metal ecosystem.

As ‘Ascension’ approaches its release date, Paradise Lost finds itself in a position reflective of its past and measured by its present: not attempting to redefine its trajectory, but reaffirming its place within a genre increasingly drawn to slow forms, narrative gravity, and sonic restraint. The album does not appear intended to disrupt this placement, but rather to extend it—further embedding the band within the tonal architectures it helped shape and continues to inhabit.

Revisiting ‘Obsidian’ (2020)

Released in May 2020, ‘Obsidian’ was Paradise Lost’s sixteenth studio album and their final record before the five-year interval leading to ‘Ascension.’ Issued through Nuclear Blast Records and recorded prior to the full onset of the global pandemic, the album was met with critical approval for its tonal subtlety and compositional maturity. It demonstrated the band’s capacity to invoke its early doom heritage while introducing melodic and gothic textures that avoided formula or regression.

What distinguished ‘Obsidian’ within the band’s catalogue was its conscious restraint. Tracks such as ‘Darker Thoughts,’ ‘Ghosts,’ and ‘Fall from Grace’ employed familiar motifs—minor key progression, dual guitar layering, and unhurried song structure—but with a sense of fluidity and clarity that departed from the denser structures of ‘The Plague Within’ (2015) and ‘Medusa’ (2017). Holmes’s vocal delivery alternated between cleans and growls, calibrated not for contrast but for mood, threading the album’s narrative without tipping into dramatic rupture.

Production was handled by Jaime Gomez Arellano, who delivered a mix that emphasized texture and spatial depth without excessive saturation. Guitars retained their warmth; rhythm sections were supportive but never dominant. The resulting soundscape was enveloping rather than aggressive, oriented toward introspection rather than catharsis. Reviews at the time noted the album’s atmospheric cohesion—’Obsidian’ functioned less as a set of isolated statements and more as a contiguous emotional register.

Emotionally, the album continued the band’s long engagement with mortality, absence, and spiritual estrangement, though it did so without resorting to overstatement. Its title, drawn from a volcanic glass known for its opacity and sharpness, served as a fitting metaphor for the record’s sound: brittle, reflective, and unyielding in tone.

While ‘Obsidian’ did not break new stylistic ground, it reasserted Paradise Lost’s capacity for thematic continuity and compositional precision. In retrospect, the album now operates as a transitional marker—closing one period of activity and, through its subdued tenor, preparing the aesthetic ground for ‘Ascension.’ If ‘Obsidian’ articulated a quiet reckoning, ‘Ascension’ appears poised to refine that reckoning into permanence.

Conclusion

As ‘Ascension’ approaches its September release, Paradise Lost reasserts its position not through spectacle or reinvention, but by sustaining the sonic and compositional values that have long defined its work. In a cultural moment increasingly preoccupied with renewal and disruption, the band offers something rarer: a continuation grounded in discipline, restraint, and formal clarity. Their seventeenth studio album does not signal rupture, but rather endurance—built not on nostalgic repetition, but on the slow refinement of a language they have shaped over decades.

The album’s production, touring infrastructure, and early reception suggest that Paradise Lost is not operating on the margins of its own history, but from within a steady creative center that resists volatility. ‘Ascension’ arrives not as an isolated gesture, but as part of an ongoing dialogue with both the band’s past and the genre’s evolving present. In reaffirming their presence through consistency and control, Paradise Lost neither retraces old steps nor departs from them—they extend them, deliberately, into the present.