Previous HAAH releases consisted of songs that tended to be independent of each other, but van Wyk’s mindset started to shift with the 2025 EP ‘Anathema’, which intentionally had a common thread running through it. “It was the first time I really started thinking in terms of a connected body of work, so it felt natural to take that further with ‘Paradise Lost’, she explains. “It is designed to be heard as one piece, even though the songs are quite different individually.”
Elaborating further, she adds: “A lot changed for me during that time personally and I went through a kind of integration process where I started confronting things more. Writing the album felt like a natural expression of that. In the past, I often struggled to bring songs together because they felt too different, but this time everything came from a similar emotional place and period in my life.”
With her inspiration often stemming from unusual sources, van Wyk reveals that “I have always been drawn to the villains in stories, the ones who were feared and misunderstood, and I have often found beauty in places other people are afraid to look – the strange, the haunted, the macabre. Some people see monsters. I see stories. I see what survived. I see how it transformed. This album is resurrection, obsession, desire, revenge, surrender, love and my shadow. I don’t believe darkness is always something to be destroyed. Sometimes it’s the only part of you strong enough to save you. This album isn’t about conventional ‘healing’. It’s about walking out of the ruins wearing the crown.”
