I still don’t get this album; lots of people seem to be right into it but I just find this album hard to devour. I like Cradle of Filth; I’m a fan of their work, not a big fan though. They are a great band; every one of them has incredibly talent. Dani is loved and hated by a lot of people, it is amazing his vocal range and the pitches he can achieve but some of his screams are very irritating and can easily get on your nerves. The guitars are nothing special but they do acquire some awesome riffage. The drums are pulled off well and are very fast. The keyboard is the instrument that sets the atmosphere giving it a black metal influence (yes, yes, I know they aren’t black metal). The band are really cool at what they do but why is it that I can barely listen to this? Read on to find out.
If you look at the track listing then you’ll notice that the album is split up into 4 parts. What does this mean you say? That’s right, a concept album. The storyline is pretty simple but it sounds dead cool. The story explains the bible in Satan’s view. The lyrics and everything bind into this storyline and it is quite interesting but I got to be honest, this album is LONG. It is 17 tracks and it is over an hour long, almost the length a full CD can take in fact. You must be a hardcore fan to listen to this the whole way through as it does drag and you’ll end up getting bored. It’ll just end up blending together. Cradle Of Filth contradict themselves here, it is near impossible to listen to this album the whole way through but the only way you’ll be able to fully understand the album is to listen to it the whole 1.2 hours. A bit awkward ain’t it?
The four chapters are called:
Fantasia Down
Paradise Lost
Sewer Side Up
The Scented Garden
Cradle of Filth try too hard to be heavy here, I prefer listening to their melodic stuff than this. Some parts of the songs are hard to listen to and the album as a whole is hard to take. This is pretty much fans only which is stupid since this was a major label release. Though this is seventeen tracks, there are 5 instrumentals only featuring an orchestra. It is nice to listen to but what has this got to do with the band? They don’t exactly arrange all the orchestral parts themselves. It’s a nice touch but it is totally irrelevant to Cradle of Filth. Some of the tracks on here are goddamn awful but some are great metal songs. “Better to Reign in Hell” is a boring track and it has no redeeming factors to make me listen to it again. Actually, I could name half the album as boring with no redeeming factors but I’ve spent enough ragging on about how the album is bad, on with the good songs!
My favourite song here is “Babylon A.D. (So Glad for the Madness)”. It is a brutal evil track. It has some of Dani’s most evil and well-done vocals on the whole album. It has a nice atmosphere and builds its foundation from that. The guitars don’t sound chunky; they are really smooth on this track. The breakdown is my favourite part where it is chaotic and then it just stops with a heartbeat and all off a sudden you’re awaken by the crazy chaos that the song contains. “Mannequin” is an OK song, the great thing about the intro is that the riff is so cool and the female vocals that back that part are so nice sounding but the bit near the chorus spoils this cool riff. This robot voice says ‘be my mannequin’ ruins it and it sounds horrible. “Hurt and virtue” is a perfectly alright song with the guitars doing some cool stuff and the keyboards adding that COF flavour. It flows great unlike a lot of the songs on offer here.
Take my word for it, this is Cradle of Filth at their worst, this is their St. Anger (which is ironic as they both drag a lot). Yes, yes, the symphony, the concept album and all this are awesome but sadly the actual music is crud. They had a giant budget; they blew it on an orchestra and made which was supposed to be a big step forward for the band, they failed this time round. This should have been great but I still don’t like it since how hard I’ve tried getting into it. If there was a more melodic approach and especially since they had a symphony then this would have been ten times better. The snare gets on my nerves because it isn’t that loud making the drums seem in the background at times. Sorry if I offend you but I just have a strong dislike to this album.
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Recommended:
Hurt and Virtue
Babylon A.D. (So Glad for the Madness)
Mannequin
