Cradle Of Filth - Total Fucking Darkness (Album Review)
Friday, 02 May 2014
Written by Alec Chillingworth
“Cradle of shit”. “Total fucking rubbish”. “Black metal ballerinas”. These names – and countless others – have been hurled at Cradle of Filth throughout a career that’s spanned a couple of decades, but very few delivering the insults actually possessed the brain cells to realise just how wrong they were.
Cradle never really claimed to be a black metal band, but on this reissue of their third demo, 'Total Fucking Darkness', they're packing enough evil to burn down a church and still have room left for lunch (a picnic in the graveyard, obviously).
Starting with a song called Spattered In Faeces pretty much sets the tone for the entire hour or so of 'Total Fucking Darkness'. It's a dirty, sordid affair. Hailing from the unreleased, long-lost 'Goetia' album, trademark keyboards kick things off before Dani Filth's throaty, low-end grunt launches a crunching thrash assault.
It’s got more in common with early Carcass, around 'Symphonies Of Sickness', than you might think, and on this occasion the band’s roots are more death metal based than anything else. If it weren't for the ominous keyboards, you could play this to a Cradle hater and they'd be none the wiser.
Then, we have the five remastered tracks from the original 'Total Fucking Darkness', a key demo in the extreme metal underground. These tunes are the bones of Cradle's mutated metal chassis. The Black Goddess Rises is similar to the version on 'The Principle Of Evil Made Flesh', showing off the band's more thoughtful, epic writing. The tremolo-picked riff during the chorus remains one of the most iconic melodies of their career.
Unbridled At Dusk is a terrifying trip into the chasms of hell, morphing from a gothic soundscape to a full-on thrashterpiece within the space of eight minutes or so. It's worth noting that Filth – the main element of Cradle that most people seem to be so averse to – delivers a legendary vocal performance throughout the entire thing.
After Fraternally Yours, 666 soothes the listener with its pipe-organ outro, there's a smattering of previously unheard rehearsal tracks from 1992. The inclusion of Devil Mayfair (AdvocatusDiaboli) is an absolute winner, yet the other tracks don't really make sense.
Three of them are on 'Total Fucking Darkness' anyway; essentially, you're listening to a demo of a demo. A copy of a copy of a copy. While this will be great for collectors and people who prefer vocals to sound as if they were recorded in a puddle of piss, they are mostly unnecessary.
When coupled with two instrumental tracks, the ferocity and overall flow of the album is stifled during the second half. The songs themselves are often incredible, but they should have been packaged as a bonus disc rather than being lumped together with the original demo.
Never ones to give a toss about what people think, most of the band's catalogue has been something of a love/hate affair, though. While the extras do detract from the pummelling cruelty of the original EP, the fact that the first half still sounds this good is a testament to Cradle's songwriting abilities. The band are a true British institution, and this reissue serves as a stern reminder of why Cradle of Filth remain one of the most successful extreme metal bands of all time.
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