Guest Reviewer: Lord Konrad Chaos
Band: Cradle Of Filth
CD Title: Dusk And Her Embrace
Year: 1996
Website: cradleoffilth.com
MySpace: myspace.com/cradleoffilth
Label: Music For Nations
Featured on: Loucifer Speaks Guest Reviewer Exclusive
Rating: 7.5 / 10
More Links: Please discuss this review and band in the Loucifer Speaks forum.
This is one of Cradle of Filth's most popular albums, fact. And I can see why, it really is a symbol of how Cradle was known, how their die-hard fans knew them as. Here, the song was more a fully functional sound, rather than songs now, where people pick up on the guitaring, or the drumming seperatley. You still can here, but everything is more 'together'.
Although I'm going to start with criticism here. Dani's voice is very nearly impossible to understand, his vocals are fast, and really far from his semi-scream shown in Thornography, Nymphetamine, even Midian. Even with the lyric book at hand, its difficult to follow along, and thats made worse because this album shows Dani's love for almost poetic ways of saying things in his lyrics. But, this is the redeeming factor, it has been said that you should view Dani's vocals not as you would a regular singers, but rather, view his voice as an instrument. When you start to do that, you look past his unintelligable scraw of a scream, and look at the rest of it.
Now Cradle of Filth has never been known for amazing guitaring, but some songs in this album really show it, especialy the song Funeral in Carpathia, its simple, but the general song composition really makes it stand out, and in an album such as this, it really shines. Otherwise, your fretwork feels like the almost generic psuedo-black metal/extreme metal stuff, nothing you can be inspired by, nothing you can air-guitar to.
In fact, a fair sized amount of the musical input is from synthesized orchestral sounds, which would probably sound amazing if done by a real orchestra, but it just doesn't feel real on the album.
But, thats all negative. This album is still a good album, it makes you realise why they are one of the most sucessful British metal bands out there, why they were popular before the cries of 'sellout' at around Midian or Nymphetamine. This was before they reached commercial sucess, and is one of their better albums for it.
Recommended Songs to Download:
Funeral In Carpathia
A Gothic Romance (Red Roses For The Devil's Whore)
Malice Through The Looking Glass
01 Humana Inspired to Nightmare
02 Heaven Torn Asunder
03 Funeral in Carpathia
04 A Gothic Romance (Red Roses for the Devil's Whore)
05 Malice Through the Looking Glass
06 Dusk and Her Embrace
07 The Graveyard by Moonlight
08 Beauty Slept in Sodom
09 Haunted Shores
