Album: "Midian" (2000)
Label: KOCH Records
Style: Goth metal
Songs: 12

Reviewed by: Darklight

Cradle Of Filth (COF) is one of the better known and more popular black metal bands. I somewhat liked their album “Dusk And Her Embrace”, but not enough to get the follow-up “Cruelty And The Beast”. However, I heard that COF had polished their sound even more on this latest offering “Midian” focusing more on deep growling vocals, eerie female chanting and dark dramatic keyboard melodies. So I decided to give it a try, and everything I heard about it proved to be true.

This album offers without a doubt some of the most insane chaotic music I’ve ever heard before. But it manages to throw in a lot of melody as well. This is what allows COF to stand out amongst so many other similar acts in my opinion. They unleash extreme metal mayhem one moment with frantic dual high-pitched male snarling/deep raw male growling and then the music slows to a crawl with haunting melodies and seductive female singing. It’s definitely a roller coaster ride of emotions.

This is the type of music that you put in your stereo and crank loud. It just doesn’t get much harder or more aggressive than this. This isn’t nice and friendly music for the masses. This is extremely dark and evil music that will scare the majority of the population. What I like about this album is that the music doesn’t sound campy. This is a dark band that genuinely sounds evil. And when I am in a really pissed off mood, there is nothing better to reach for.

I don’t have many complaints here. The songs all do sound somewhat similar to each other, but there are so many twists, turns and surprises in the songs that they are each just as entertaining to listen to. They are also rather lengthy and placed in a good order.

Thankfully, the high-pitched snarling vocals aren’t as high-pitched as they were in the past. Before they sounded silly to me, but now they are a bit rougher sounding like they are sung by a raving mad lunatic. Also, deep demon sounding vocals are used a lot here making for a better contrast between the two different vocal styles. However, I would have liked the addition of more female vocals. There is a lot of female chanting in the background, but not enough actual female singing. This is one aspect COF can improve upon.

If you have any interest in a frantic and chaotic goth metal album with rabid male vocals, deep demon male vocals, female chanting, heavy guitars, manic drum smashing and haunting melodies, this COF album is definitely for you.

Album: "Dusk And Her Embrace" (1997)
Label: Fierce Recordings
Style: Goth metal
Songs: 9

Reviewed by: Darklight

This is pure heavy and aggressive guitar thrashing, drum slamming dark metal music with a combination of high pitched male squeeling screaming, deep evil male singing and beautiful female vocals as well. The songs here are mainly made with guitars, bass and drums. However, there are haunting and orchestrated synths included as well to give the music an overall gothic feel. Think of maybe Type O Negative with much more anger and aggression combined with psychotic screaming and some female singing. The songs are basically thrashy noise without a lot of structure. Everything just goes haywire while the vocals shout over it all. But the songs do make changes along their course. They have piano/synth type breaks in them that come and go as well as beautiful female singing that helps calm things down a bit. There is a lot of drama, passion and emotion to be found here. This is death metal music with a gothic edge. It's pure chaotic mayhem with a lot of dramatic and orchestrated elements that add variety. My complaint with the album is that while each song does feature quite a lot of changes in them, they still all come off sounding the same. Also, the high pitched screaming vocals sound like a pissed off witch that I personally find to be rather humorous. They tend to take away the more dark and serious mood of the music because I can't help but laugh when I hear them. I would like this band a lot more if the deep male vocals and female singing were the main focus. But this is still some of the better death metal music that I have heard considering the fact that they put a lot of changing emotions and directions in each of their songs. If you're a fan of dark metal music, this Cradle Of Filth album can't be missed.