Review Summary: This is what Heaven exploding sounds like.
You ever notice how oftentimes a band's best material is born out of periods of insane stress and everything going wrong? Never more true did that ring than in 1995, when Cradle of Filth, fresh off their debut with The Principle of Evil Made Flesh, suffered a one-two punch for the ages. First, the band splintered right down the middle, with the band experiencing a situation similar to the modern day woes of Gorgoroth or Queensryche or Immortal or Venom or Entombed or whatever, with one Cradle of Filth comprised of Dani Filth, Robin Graves, and Nick Barker, and another made up of Paul & Benjamin Ryan and Paul Allender. To add to all of this, the Dani-led half, despite regaining ownership of the name from the Ryans and Allender, were engaged in a fight with Cacophonous Records, the label responsible for the release of The Principle of Evil of Made Flesh, wanting out of their contract immediately. To do so, the band had to release one more record of original material. Thus was born Vempire or Dark Faerytales in Phallustein, the band's
other crowning achievement of the mid-90s.
There exists one word to sum up this EP: Madness. Complete, utter, absolute madness. Even Dusk and Her Embrace, the full length that followed this EP and is still the benchmark of perfection for symphonic black metal 20 years later, is given a run for its money by its immediate predecessor in the department of savagery. The anger and frustration that the band were surely feeling during this period of their career comes out in full force on Vempire, with the band unleashing its most violent material possible for 37 straight minutes. "The Rape and Ruin of Angels" in particular features the single most extreme sections of a song the band have ever written, and the overall piece remains the band's most underrated, overlooked tune in their history. The re-recording of "The Forest Whispers My Name" from the debut LP so greatly outshines the original version that it doesn't even make sense to go back and listen to the latter unless you've got the debut disk on in sequence. Very little time is given for the listener to catch their breath, with brief moments of brevity coming in the keyboard-and-bass-driven middle sections of "Queen of Winter, Throned" and "Nocturnal Supremacy", as well as "She Mourns a Lengthening Shadow", the band's greatest interlude written to date. Beyond those brief sections, the rest of the EP is razor sharp guitars, thick, pounding basslines, unending blast beats on the drums, and Dani Filth's ultimate triumph in the vocal department. Everyone is on point, all participants deserve a bleeding virgin angel as reward for their efforts.
I absolutely love the sound of this EP, and these songs in this specific collection with any other sort of sound just would not work in the same way. This is probably the most crisp, clear, and song-enhancing production the band has ever given a record of theirs. It's extraordinarily "modern" sounding for a record from 1995, and it stands in stark contrast to the murkier, rougher, lo-fi(ish) sound of the two full lengths that bookend it. It's loud, crisp, and clear (some might say a bit too clear for a black metal record, especially from this time period, but to each his own), with everything existing on an even level, but not to the point of drowning anything out or brickwalling and clipping like crazy. That's what separates it from many newer records of the past decade that attempt to do this style of production and fail; the EP doesn't go so far over the top with the loudness that it ruins the music. Special mention goes to whatever effects were used on Dani Filth's "narration" voice to make it as deep and inhuman sounding as it is here. It's very clear that his voice has been doctored to make it sound more inhuman in these speaking parts, and in the majority of cases I'm against vocal effects to this degree, but, quite frankly, I don't ***ing care, because the end result is absolutely amazing. This is probably the best Nick Barker's kit has sounded on any album he's ever played on as well, and his performance matches the sound perfectly, holding nothing back and showing the world exactly what he can do when you let him loose. Stuart Antsis more than holds the weight of two guitars in his position as the sole axe wielder, and Robin Graves maintains his role as a very solid backbone to everything going on with his performance on the bass. It really must be heard to be believed, for everyone on here.
There are two very telling moments in the opening and closing tracks of this EP, "Ebony Dressed for Sunset" and "The Rape and Ruin of Angels", that perfectly sum up exactly what the record is about. At the end of both tracks, amongst the black metal craziness going on around them, the listener hears the screams and weeps of many young women, inferred by the final track's title to be angels in Heaven above. In the latter track, as the angels' collective anguish makes itself audible, one can also hear a burning fire behind the screams. That, in a nutshell, is what can be surmised from Vempire or Dark Faerytales in Phallustein; Heaven is being firebombed by agents of the Devil, its women taken as prizes for the successfully invading armies of darkness, and someone took the exquisite noises that arose from such an occasion and made a black metal record out of it. In the grand scheme of the band's legacy, this sits right up there with Dusk and Her Embrace and Midian as one of their three perfect records, and, as a result, is one of the finest black metal records in the genre's 30+ year history. Find this, embrace it, hold it close, and never let it go.
