Cradle of Filth - Dusk…And Her Embrace: The Original Sin (Album Review)
Thursday, 07 July 2016
Written by Alec Chillingworth
For nearly two decades, any attempts to force new Cradle of Filth releases upon non-believers have been futile. Many ‘trVe’ fans clocked out just before the turn of the century. But the band never went away. In fact, recent years have found them sifting through their past and uncovering nuggets of gold. Two years ago we got a reissue of the raw ‘Total Fucking Darkness’ demo collection and now, 21 years on from their recording, we have in our hands the original, scrapped tapes once intended for the band’s immaculate second record, ‘Dusk… And Her Embrace’.
And they quite literally were tapes. Producer extraordinaire Scott Atkins has given ‘The Original Sin’ a perverted polish here and there, but there’s no re-recorded or remixed vocals, guitars or drums here. This is dirty, feral music influenced by black metal’s second wave and Burzum, Emperor and Impaled Nazarene are all handy reference points. They always were reference points, even on the streamlined masterpiece that ‘Dusk…’ eventually became, but even then they were mixed with elements of Iron Maiden and King Diamond, along with Sisters of Mercy and moves into more romantic, gothic corners.
A Gothic Romance, The Graveyard By Midnight and a few others on this version of the record still possess that libidinous vibe, but for the most part ‘The Original Sin’ is a gnarly bastard and home to the sort of raw, spiteful vocals we’ve never really heard from Dani Filth before. His voice has always been considered an instrument rather than a tool to convey feeling, but here he tears through the lyrics with a throaty, emotive scream that puts his contemporaries to shame and makes Shagrath sound like Beyoncé.
By opening with the instrumental Macabre, This Banquet and leaping straight into Nocturnal Supremacy, ‘The Original Sin’ is very much a powerful, brutish listen. Heaven Torn Asunder comes straight after and even that’s a case of more hack and slash, cutting out the eerie crackle of flames that set the scene on the later incarnation of ‘Dusk…’.
What we have here is a demo containing some of the best songs in the genre. But the re-recorded version, eventually released by Music For Nations after the band’s messy split from Cacophonous, remains a milestone. It broke Cradle of Filth in multiple territories and it is their best work. It just is.
There are notable moments where ‘The Original Sin’ falls short of chomping the neck of its counterpart. The ghostly vocal melodies running through Haunted Shores’ verses sound like a Scooby Doo outtake, while the immortal cry of “Never Leave Me!” is stifled during Funeral In Carpathia, losing the punch it possesses on the later release. You could also nitpick about differing lyrics – “Drunk on red wine, her dead lips are mine,” from A Gothic Romance and Heaven Torn Asunder’s “Poised to sodomise a world upon its knees” are two choice phrases cruelly omitted – but the only things really stopping this rivalling the much-loved ‘Dusk…’ are minor, youthful errors.
More than anything, ‘The Original Sin’ is a potent reminder of the force Cradle of Filth could, and on occasion still can, be. Hearing Barker smash through Beauty Slept In Sodom will bring tears to the eyes. Hearing Paul Allender work in tandem with Paul Ryan is somewhat rose-tinted, harking back to a time before he tried to turn Cradle into a punk band. ‘The Original Sin’ is arguably the band’s definitive line-up playing their definitive album. That we have one ‘Dusk…And Her Embrace’ is something we should never take for granted and perhaps we should never complain about anything ever again, because we now have two.
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