Lost Paradise if you want slow death metal
Gothic if you want death/doom
Icon/Draconian Times if you want gothic metal

I find Gothic to be their peak.

Glad I was backing Holmes at the tail end. Awesome to see he'll be full on growling. Good news to wake up to.

I find Draconian Times to be their best but his growls during the earlier albums were always awesome.

so after all that ruling out nick holmes stuff.... it was nick holmes?
i mean the dude was the most obvious choice by far, i guess they had to steer everyone off track with the "not currently active" stuff if they wanted to keep the ball rolling.
in any case, will be cool to hear him growl again.

I think there was a hint on the album cover actually, that triangle reminds me of the one on the cover of Lost Paradise

They've pretty much done the gamut of styles, so yeah.. Pick a style that suits and work your way from there. I personally started with Host because I heard Year of Summer on a horror movie soundtrack.

He hasnt been able to growl decently since...uff I dont remember. I dont feel very hopeful about this.

Not a big PL fan but he's got a fairly dry, thin growl doesn't he? Should be interesting considering they've used meatier vocalists in the past. Looking forward to hearing some samples.

Right, I'm a Paradise Lost accolite and like so much Nick Holmes... but, is his voice/growl fits the Bloodbath death metal?

Or Renske and Blakkeim writing music based on Nick's vocals?

Can we waiting for a death/doom (boring) album like new Vallenfyre?

Only time will tell...

Did I not fucking tell you it was Nick Holmes?

Y'all bitches need to learn to pay attention.

They just upped the ante on the "supergroup" tag, and since they barely play live I guess there will be more than its fair share of studio trickery for Nick to sound super tight. Don't take me wrong, I adore Paradise Lost, but the fact is that Nick's voice has been going into the gutter for years. And let's not even begin to compare him to Peter...

Oh well, we'll see how this fares in the end.

No idea why your having your doubts about Nick pulling off actual growls. I was skeptical about his vocals on the re-recordings but he nailed those and When I saw Paradise Lost live the guy actually sounded the best on ''Gothic'' and ''Rotting Misery''. His voice was a bit raspier and not as deep as on the re-recordings but still solid enough.

This should give you an idea of what he sounds like nowadays.



Having that said, I've only heard Nightmares Made Flesh which I thought was mediocre.

The Wacken Carnage shall win you over.

I'd hardly call that a great performance. It's good for nowadays but nothing to stand against the actual studio version. Nick has lost most of his low register, and I mean that low end really. When he growls he does it at a higher tone because he lacks the low end he used to have.

Point about my earlier post being, supergroup band got a supergroup singer. More so than a capable one. But then again that's just me being sceptic about this whole marketing plot.

Well, I'll be. It did turn out to be Nick Holmes! I just hope he can nail the old songs if they play live. I'll reserve judgment for when a new song hits.

Voice aside, I saw Paradise Lost a couple years ago and he was one of the most boring, uninteresting frontman I have ever seen. He acted like an awkward kid in a high school band who had never been on stage before.

This is gonna be a let down. Homes growls are super weak compared to Mikael and Peters. Can he he even do shrieks?

I am in a way stoked but i am also going to wait out the end result before saying that the album will be 'awesome'. I know that Bloodbath never really will make the same album twice, and this will be no different. Probably a little bit more slower death metal approach than we're used of them.... But this could prove an interesting sound change. I am pretty sure that Nick Holmes will be able to prove himself in the studio, BUT... Nick Holmes performing with Bloodbath for a full performance with newer and older and faster Bloodbath material will be a hefty challenge for him. If he suceeds in this, good for him, and i wish him longlasting run with Bloodbath. And if not, I'm pretty sure that Nick Holmes will not be afraid to admit that he is subpar to what the ideal Bloodbath vocalist should be and to eventually throw the towel in the ring with style after at least one full Bloodbath tour. Nick Holmes always left us into the dark with his death metal affinity these days. I thought I remembered saying once that he has problems keeping up the death metal vocals for a full performance (or am I confusing a quote with one of Akerfeldt's ?), but i guess he has finally come forth again (in a silent way, I am actually pretty curious to his next couple of interviews adressing this matter, so if anyone finds anything online, please share!) to show us that he still has some affinity with some good old school extreme metal and is even willing to do a full album of growling his guts out and even doing shows live.

So why do you even give a shit about Bloodbath then? That's by far their best album.

I had a feeling it might be Nick Holmes. Vallenfyre is coming over to MDF, and they have a couple members from Paradise Lost, so having Nick tag along for the Bloodbath gig makes sense. Now, I'm not familiar with either Vallenfyre's or Bloodbath's material, but I think a Paradise Lost performance at MDF would have been cool, despite talk about their shows being boring. I've heard the contrary as well.

It took me forever of searching to finally figure out that Nick Holmes hasn't growled on PL except for the first 3, in which his growling left me wanting more. That's not to say he can't do it though, and I'm pretty excited to see how he turns out.

The best Bloodbath album is "Resurrection Through Carnage". I expect the new one to be very good as well, though I wish Dan Swano were still the drummer (or involved at all). That's actually the only thing I'm wary about...Dan is such an incredible songwriter (and the only good songs on "Nightmares" were the ones he wrote), how can they fill that void? I simply prefer his laid-back style, which is more authentic old school death drumming, to what I've heard from this guy.

Am I the only one that thinks the Fathomless Mastery is their best?

Yes. That's very likely.

Saw this on bbc news today



Pretty funny coincidence.

Why the ever living fuck is one of their guitarists playing with his string upside down?

I didn't know you can have a string upside down.

Ahaha, no in all seriousness, it's because he's left handed and likely didn't have a left handed guitar when he was learning.

I wouldn't say it's their best but I really grew to love this album. I think it's great and I don't understand the hate. Then again I love everything they've done so I'm not exactly objective.

It is Nick Holmes? Are you kidding! He sounds absolutely terrible these days...why not get Jonas going harsh again if you're so desperate for old times? Aaron Stainthorpe has always been so much better than Holmes but even he would make an ill fit in Bloodbath.

That ranted, I am rather curious about what Nick will sound like.

srs? i saw paradise lost in 2012 and he was hilarious. cracked jokes the entire time, his sense of humour was very self-deprecating but also wry and clever. given that akerfeldt's style is also to growl and make jokes about death metal between every song, i think holmes'll fit right in.

I'm personally strongly of the opinion that Resurrection Through Carnage was Bloodbath's best album. For me, it goes: RTC > BD > NMF > UTP > TFM. The Wacken Carnage is a great live album, too.

Anders' statements have implied that this album might be a return to the more old school production style of RTC, which I'd personally prefer. It seems clear that this album will be a sort of sludgy/doomy/slow death metal in the vein of Autopsy, Incantation, Immolation, Disma, and Dead Congregation. I'm not sure what to think about that. That's a sort of death metal I've not gotten very into yet. Bloodbath, more than any other band, could be able to change that, though.

You mean during the tour with Devin and Katatonia? I was there, too, at Studio Seven. He wasn't the most memorable but I don't think he was too uninteresting. Couldn't tell what he was saying at all between songs but during them he wasn't bad.

I'm real stoked on this actually, Nick Holmes is one of my favourite vocalists and when I saw him with Paradise Lost and Cathedral, he absolutely killed.
This is actually the first album of this year I've been excited for.

Interesting choice! I'm a big fan of Paradise Lost, and their showis are hit or miss. I saw them twice here in Argentina: the first time in 2012, Nick was very cheerful, drinking beer on stage and cracking jokes. He sang like shit though, a very weak performance. The last time (early this year) however, he was pretty serious, sad-looking, and he gave an AMAZING performance: his vocals were outstanding, and his growls in Rotting Misery and Gothic kicked major ass. I saw a lot of footage of the tour and he's just what I said, hit or miss, but when he is on a good mood, he can still pull decent growls:



On studio he will kick major ass: I really like how the Gothic and Rotting Misery remakes sound in Tragic Illusion 25... the problem will be on tour. The "good" thing is that Bloodbath plays just a few shows once in a while, so, maybe Nick will put more effort on this. It would be a cool thing to read/hear an interview with him to see how does he feels about all of this: last time I think he said something like "growling is for kids"... maybe it's somekind of "Vallenfyre" effect and he suddenly fell in love again with extreme music, so he's kind of motivated... or maybe not. Anyways, I'm pretty anxious to hear a song from the new album.

EDIT: found the interview, it's from December, 2009!

let me guess you also think someone who does not like a band can't review it either.

Dan Swano plays leftie but learned on a guitar flipped upside down

I know someone who is lefty and used to play on my (right handed) guitar upside down like it was no problem at all (btw for you non-guitar players, right handed guitar upside down is not lefty! ), wtf, now that was just really confusing xD And btw a guitar string upside down, is still the same friggin guitar string guys!

Nick sounds good enough on that video. This might work just well.

either way, i am stoked for this release regardless of a vocalist..
sure it will be evil, awesome and energetic.
yes..

I think the new album will have a major shift in sound to accommodate Nick's style. I am excited. Now we wait for them to drip feed us small snippets of music like most bands do these days.

Is that the mental image he gets from Bathory, or is he actually reminded of a time when he was doing that in Sweden?