Cradle of Filth’s 9th studio offering is a concept album, based around the demoness Lilith, first wife of Adam and subject of various stories and boobs-out painting over the years. The lyrics and subject matter are pretty standard metal fayre, but I find myself unable to get in to them. For example, the voice-overs that say, “All mirrors lead to my palace – my exotic pleasure temple”, and, “I’ll nurture you and hurt you too, fulfil all wishes for my sad Aladdin”, both seem a bit silly really – but this may be because I am not listening to it in the appropriate midnight, candle-lit, blacker-than-black surroundings; there’s no wi-fi coverage in my dungeon, don’t you know…
Overall, Darkly… has a very intense sound – mostly double-kick driven, fast and angry. Unfortunately, the machine-gun drumming has been compressed into monotony, and it’s hard to feel a real sense of ‘rock’ in the tunes, despite the pretty incredible musicianship. The squeeze to get every last drop of volume out of the music often leaves the vocals a bit swamped and indiscernible. If I’m honest, I’m not sure that I want to hear about, “The spurting of his seed inside her cave”, on my lunch-break, but if I had this album as a fan, I would most certainly want to be able to make out what was being said/shouted/screamed.
‘The Persecution Song’ stands out – slower than most of the rest, but building throughout the song to a real head-banging conclusion, with just enough space in it to make it really good to mosh along to. ‘Deceiving Eyes’ starts off with an amazing Pantera-esque riff, but doesn’t develop it the way I would hope – it reverts to the musical equivalent of a pneumatic drill once the drums kick in. ‘Forgive me Father I have Sinned’, is Maiden-meets-Metallica with female vocals reminiscent of Evanescence.
Further comparisons with Iron Maiden are inevitable – Maiden are the only British metal band to outsell Cradle of Filth, and Dani Filth himself has said this album takes after them. However, musically CoF have a lot more up their sleeves, making use of orchestral strings, chugging riffs, organs and synth sounds, female vocals, a fair few voice-overs, plenty of palm-muting and lashings and lashings of double-kickdrum. The only thing CoF really lack, which Iron Maiden did have, is those incredible rousing choruses. Regrettably, that puts them in a style that has been done to death (and many horrible things afterwards), with nothing to set them a part from a list of metal bands so long that would make my editor explode.
Darkly, Darkly Venus Aversa never really relents – which I don’t like. Being heavy is all good, but it loses its impact after a few songs if there is nothing to contrast it with, nothing to throw it into relief. It’s just like the way that drinking champagne every night in your mansion with a gaggle of groupies gets a little dry after a year or two. That’s not to say it’s not good, I just think maybe it needs to get out more, meet real people, get some sunlight, that sort of thing.
Release Date 01/11/2010 (Peaceville Records)