Released Via Nuclear Blast Records
Genre: Gothic Black Metal
Track Listing:
1. Walpurgis Eve
2. Yours Immortally...
3. Enshrined In Crematoria
4. Deflowering The Maidenhead, Displeasuring The Goddess
5. Blackest Magick In Practice
6. The Monstrous Sabbat (Summoning The Coven)
7. Hammer Of The Witches
8. Right Wing Of The Garden Triptych
9. The Vampyre At My Side
10. Onward Christian Soldiers
11. Blooding The Hounds Of Hell
From
the opening seconds of the renaissance-reeking ‘Walpurgis Eve’ into ‘Yours
Immortally…’ it is only too clear that Cradle Of Filth are back and in
inexplicably rude health. Frontman Dani Filth’s voice is on form, to say the
least. His trademark piercing screams are pushed further than some may expect,
and are littered throughout this record, but not to the point that it becomes
ineffective. In fact, effect seems to be the word of the day as far as these
compositions are concerned. Regardless of what some people may argue, Cradle Of
Filth’s sound is built upon a core of black metal, but the gothic shades make
it a different beast, and then within this album, there are other elements that
build Cradle’s sound up to even more grandeur than we have heard on the band’s
most recent releases. ‘Enshrined In
Crematoria’ features riffs which bring the heaviness and intricacy of
melodic death metal, whereas ‘Blackest
Magick In Practice’ has moments that are akin to technical death metal, as
hard as that may be to fathom. Cradle Of Filth have always been difficult to
pigeonhole, which has been their greatest strength, and now they’re playing to
that strength very, very well. This has doubtlessly been enhanced by new
guitarists Marek 'Ashok' Šmerda and Richard Shaw, as the twin
guitars bring back a more three-dimensional guitar style than was heard on ‘The Manticore And Other Horrors’. The
album’s title track, dealing with the book of its namesake, the Malleus
Maleficarum, and the prosecution of witchcraft in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, is razor sharp and shows that Dani still has a flair for poetic
lyricism, whilst the heavy-handed first single ‘Right Wing Of The Garden Triptych’ shows Lindsay Schoolcraft to
have a beautiful and harrowing voice, capable of taking moments at the
forefront, as well as a great ear for slight musical nuances. Altogether, this
intense and harrowing journey through the theatrical world of Cradle Of Filth
stands not only as a return-to-form, but perhaps as one of the band’s most
undisputedly cohesive and quality records to date.
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