Album: "Download This" (1996)
Label: Triple X Records
Style: Cyber-Core
Songs: 18

Reviewed by: Darklight

This is the newest album by Cradle Of Thorns, and it sounds nothing like their previous album "Feed Us". The band has completely dumped their female singer, and any goth touches along with her. Now they are a very hard-core and aggressive electro punk band with a lot of hip-hop rhythms, beats, and singing styles thrown into the mix. The guitars thrash, drums slam, and vocals scream. There are some great uses of electronics, synths, and samples in this music as well. Each and every song here is extremely catchy with a blend of both hip-hop word blurting and punk style screaming. There are similar styles to Acumen, Faith No More, Rage Against The Machine, and Korn found in this music. But the material found here does present its own unique sound. This band creates very solid and well structured music. It will be catchy and hip-hop style one minute, and then morph into extremely aggressive thrash punk the next. It's quite an original experience. Ty Elam, the singer of the band, has a great voice and sings extremely well. He compliments the stylistic music perfectly. There is a lot of variety to be found on this album. The songs "Picture Perfect", "I Go 1st", and "1 Eyed 1 Formed Blind Consuming People Eater" each include a hip-hop flavor to them. The songs "Roaches 4 Roaches", "Cocain 4 Breakfast", "S.P.A.M.", "Sleep With The T.V. On", "Buckets Of Fraud", and "Relax And Recline" are all extremely straight forward aggressive electro punk songs. The song "Subtract" is extremely melodic and reminiscent of the material found of "Feed Us". The songs "We Came 2 Wreck Everything", "Utah Flesh", "Bulimia Blow-Job", "End Of Side 1", "Thirsty 4 Sex", "Chant Of The Goat Faced Tribe", and "The Golden Butt Plug Puppet Show" are all strange types of instrumental pieces with samples. There is even a cover of Motley Crue's "Shout At The Devil" here. This album is fantastic, and definitley deserves recognition. But being a fan of Cradle Of Thorn's original sound, I will miss getting any new material by them that is dark, evil, and gothic featuring a combination of both male and female vocals. I would have prefered that the band members started a side project for this new sound, and kept Cradle Of Thorns a goth rock band.

Album: "Feed Us" (1994)
Label: Triple X Records
Style: Goth rock
Songs: 10

Reviewed by: Darklight

This band is very unique. They combine both male and female vocals, guitars, drums, synths, distortion, and samples. The overall feel is very eerie and evil, but hard-core and aggressive at the same time. The combination of Ty Elam's harsh vocals and Tamera Slayton's beautifully haunting singing can't be described. They blend their singing perfectly with the music. The changes come in at the right spots, the samples are added when needed, and the overlaying echoing of Tamera's voice is unbelievable. This band is a team effort. Nothing is out of place. The songs presented on this album couldn't be done any better. Every track is just as good as the next. The diversity is amazing.