Paradise Lost is a gothic doom metal band that has been around since the 90s. They are usually one of the go-to bands when it comes to this doom metal genre along with other popular names like Swallow the Sun, Sunn O))), Sleep and even to an extent Type O Negative. Though the gothic part of their music is bit more recent.
The Plague Within is the band's newest album. Including a length of nearly an hour, its gothic and doom style either seem to alternate or sometimes even join forces so you get a little of both regardless. Most of the tracks run anywhere from 5 - 7 minutes in length meaning that for doom metal, these tracks are relatively short in comparison to something from say, Swallow the Sun or Sleep. Not ray they can't make long epics, I'm sure they have, they just don't show here. The music, as with most doom metal, is relatively slow and crunchingly heavy and can evoke many feelings usually in the negative side like sadness and despair. There are also alternations with the vocals going from the harsh growls to clean vocals similar to that of other doom bands and Opeth have also done this as well. This adds nice diversity with the vocals and it seems as if both sides fit well with the music playing. Generally the death vocals come at the faster or heavier sections and the cleans come at the slower and melodic sections, the latter of which isn't in every song though. With the slowed down tempos to like an Adagio or Moderato speed, you shouldn't expect any instrument to be able to do much more than 100 bpm so if you like the faster more thrashy stuff, I won't recommend it because you'll get none of that. Considering its slow speed, you can also find yourself drifting into this world you can picture from the music and if you don't like that, read a book or write something instead because it works for good background music as well.
Overall, I'd give this an 8/10. There can be some things that irk me but they seem so minor, they seem more like nitpicking. I am the Grim Reaper, signing off.