I was given my copy of the new CRADLE OF FILTH album by one of the nice gents from Peaceville Records at the album release party along with a rather nifty lighter that doubles up as a bottle opener. Result.
The party itself was a rather cool booze up in a Soho basement bar where we got to hang out and chat with the band and their video director as well as many of the other people involved with the band. It was good to have a decent chat with Paul again as it's about 10 years or so since I last talked to him having been introduced by my Girlfriend Jo's best friend Lisa who was the model on Cradle Of Filth's infamous Desire Me Like Satan poster and T-shirt that was good enough to get the band banned and removed from the Vatican a few years ago.
This was a lot of fun and it was good to see Paul making James open his beers with his teeth. We also had a chat with Dani who speaks in such a nice quiet voice. We were certainly rather drunk by the time we left and are thankful to everyone who helped put this night on.
So to the album. The Manticore that is of course the mythical beast with the horned head of a woman with the bewinged body of a lion and the poison barbed tail of a dragon. Well, what else could it be?
The album opens with The Unveiling of O. It has a slow pulse and feels like the opening overture for a silent film as the strings build until it's time for the full raging pummelling hell of The Abhorrent to crash in as Dani sings and screams of bringing desolation and slaughter to his enemies in a dark and hellish tale that ends with him revealing the abhorrent to also be known as Lucifer or Satan. This is classic Cradle of Filth and sounds exactly how I expect them to sound.
The strings envelop us as the drums and guitars rip at our ear drums on For Your Vulgar Delectation while Dani intones a tale of debauchery and pagan lust and leaves the listeners wondering if they are the ones who crave sins innovations.
Illicitus has some great strings almost buried under the tune. If they were stripped out could almost be classical music, though the lyrics take aim at our darkened hearts while we learn of Salome's relationship with the Illicitus. I particularly liked the way Dani sings the line "They Hissed Her Name in Perverted Dictum."
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Manticore feels like the centre of the album with raging guitars and keyboards in the centre surrounded by strings that are almost a classical overture by someone like Shostakovitch while the story of dragons and the beast in the darkness envelops us in the dark poetry of the lyrics which are well worth reading as a poem in their own right.
The next song that grabbed me by the ears and forced me to listen very closely was Pallid Reflection whose lyrics are a great sung poem as we find that he is no further needed in the mirror by his pallid reflection while this tune has the most bowel shaking bass on the album. It really shook around my feet.
This album rages at you and never gives up so that by the time you get to Nightmares of An Ether Drinker you just want to down a few glasses and drift into the nightmare of sound that surrounds and insinuates itself into your very core. They may have been siding with Titans but now as Maelstroms are loosed in the garden and Walpurgis is thirsting for souls once more it is time for Hell's own choir to come in to tell us that Dreams amass, nightmares are rising, and as the tune builds towards its climax you know there is little chance of escape from the nightmares.
The album's last song is Death, The Great Adventure. It opens with a quote from Carl Jung before disaster crawls out from under the stairs and all sorts of madness (both lyrical and musical) unfolds among the raging guitars and Hell's own drums. It can only be followed by the Sinfonia string outro that leads you out of the pit of iniquity you have been wallowing in and out back to normality once more.
This is everything you'd expect from Cradle Of Filth with great artwork too. This album might not win them many new fans but it will certainly make the faithful very happy indeed.
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