Cryptoriana – The Seductiveness Of Decay: CD

For the last quarter of a century, Cradle Of Filth have assumed the role of dark metal diarists, exploring the amorphous horrors that lurk in humanity’s shadows and revelling in the opulence of mortal sin across centuries powered by bleak romance and a lust for the sensually grotesque.

Formed in England in 1991, Cradle Of Filth generated an immediate underground buzz with their early demos, before stamping their authority on the UK’s burgeoning black and death metal underground with their debut album, ‘The Principle Of Evil Made Flesh’, in 1994. A monstrous blend of ornamental terror and pummelling vitriol, it marked the band out as a unique proposition and one of few modern bands capable of driving heavy music forward while honouring its traditions. Not surprisingly, a combination of frontman Dani Filth’s insanely evocative lyrics and the intensely detailed and the compelling imagery that the band harnessed with great skill have since ensured that Cradle’s music has both endured and expanded over the best part of three decades.

Currently enjoying a collective creative renaissance that is driving them to new heights of elegant fury, the band – Dani, guitarists Ashok and Richard Shaw, bassist Daniel Firth, keyboard & vocal siren Lindsay Schoolcraft and mercurial percussive mainstay Martin Škaroupka – are more potent and devastating than ever before as they approach the release of their latest and perhaps greatest studio effort, ‘Cryptoriana – The Seductiveness Of Decay’.“This album represents an onwards and upwards drive for the band, building on the success of ‘Hammer Of The Witches’ and pushing further with the venomous musicology to create something that is both unique and loyal to our previous incarnations,” Dani Filth states. “ Plus we covered ‘Alison Hell’ by Annihilator, a thrash metal classic that has been on our proverbial lips for centuries!”

A monstrous tour-de-force of utterly distinctive but reassuringly destructive heavy fucking metal, laced with spectral disquiet but delivered with muscular aplomb, ‘Cryptoriana’ was conceived during the summer of 2016 as Cradle Of Filth convened in Ashok and Škaroupka's native Czech Republic, before being meticulously pieced together by the band and now long-time producer Scott Atkins back in the UK during the first half of 2017. From the exhilarating melodrama of opening two-fisted salvo ‘Exquisite Torments Await’ and ‘Heartbreak And Seance’ onwards, the twelfth Cradle album manifestly represents yet another wild expansion of the band’s sonic manifesto across nine epic and elaborate new anti-hymns.“The album, both lyrically and artistically, is infused with Victorian gothic horror and thus the title is a reflection of that,” Dani explains. “'Cryptoriana' implies the Victorians’ infatuation with the supernatural, the grave and the fervently ghoulish. The subtitle, 'The Seductiveness Of Decay', further cements the attraction to death and the glittering lengthy process of self-annihilation.. As they prepare to introduce these stunning new songs to their dedicated global fan base, Cradle Of Filth have never been more powerful or their excellence so undeniable.