:: Cradle Of Filth - Darkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa

Cradle Of Filth

With a career spanning some sixteen years, and with eight full-length albums to their name, English based extreme gothic metal act Cradle Of Filth have produced some truly outstanding efforts. But like any band with a long history, Cradle of Filth has also put together a couple of albums that were best described as underwhelming, which has only divided the opinion of fans and critics alike. One album that didn’t grab me quite in the way I hoped was 2006’s ‘Thornography’. While it wasn’t quite the complete disaster that some would have you believe, it certainly didn’t rival some of the band’s past releases, and as a consequence rarely gets much of an airing compared to other albums. The band did manage to redeem themselves to some extent with their follow-up effort ‘Godspeed On The Devil’s Thunder’ (2008), with the future looking quite promising should they manage to maintain their return to form with their next release. Two years on, and Cradle Of Filth are back with their ninth effort ‘Darkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa’. And as hinted on their former release, Cradle Of Filth’s latest effort is another step in the right direction. Like most Cradle Of Filth’s efforts, ‘Darkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa’ is a conceptually based effort, with the album centring on Lilith and her demonic existence throughout time. On the musical front, ‘Darkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa’ is still very much a typical Cradle Of Filth album, with the eleven tracks on the album seeing the band step up the extremity of their last couple of releases to give the album an overwhelming sense of power and aggression, without forsaking the bombastic symphonic edge and sense of theatrics that have since become the band’s trademark over the years.

Where this album really succeeds over ‘Godspeed On The Devil’s Thunder’ is in the song writing. Although there’s nothing on the album that could be called a huge departure into the unknown, almost all of the songs on ‘Darkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa’ come across as well constructed and thought out to emphasise the band’s strengths, as evident in the opener ‘The Cult Of Venus Aversa’. With the briefest of introductions (Lucy Atkins provides the voice of Lilith), the band waste little time getting into the heart of the matter, with the tight knit riffing, dramatic synths and the relentless demonic firepower of the drums throughout making up the metallic backbone of the song, all that much stronger. ‘One Foul Step From The Abyss’ is another stand out cut with its melodic tempo and the gothic overtones from the keyboards alternating with the guitar heavy passages, while the dark and twisted ‘The Persecution Song’ and ‘Forgive Me Father (I Have Sinned)’ lean further towards the melodic direction of the band’s patent blackened song writing style. Other noteworthy mentions include the straight forward pummelling of ‘Deceiving Eyes’, the vocal duality and sheer blast of ‘Lilith Immaculate’, ‘The Nun With The Astral Habit’ and the dramatic/cinematic feel of the album’s closer ‘Beyond The Eleventh Hour’. At this stage, few would expect Cradle Of Filth to make any huge changes to their sound. Instead, what fans want most from Cradle Of Filth is an album that remains consistent and interesting from start to finish. ‘Darkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa’ isn’t without a couple of tracks that misfire, but it is an album that is at least far superior to their last couple of releases. Overall, this album is one of Cradle of Filth’s strongest efforts in some time, and an album that fans will hail as one of their more noteworthy releases in years, with the album boasting far more strengths than weaker elements.