METAL

There will always be a place in the history of metal for Cradle of Filth. They’ve been reliably upsetting our self imposed moral guardians since their inception. However, this is Cradle’s main problem - as an idea they’re like a bolt from the bowels of hell but the music never quite lives up to their infernal promise of blacker than black metal. Here we have a serviceable slab of hard, heavy, operatic gothica, that at times veers into absurdist comedy (especially their reworking of Heaven 17’s ‘Temptation’). Admittedly, Dani Filth is in on the joke, but these often overwrought tales of death and mortal sin are far less engaging than the concept of CoF.