Cradle of Filth

It’s arguable that Cradle of Filth is the biggest black-metal band of all time. On the other hand, to many metal “connoisseurs” (a.k.a. snobs), it’s arguable that Cradle of Filth is even a black-metal band. For the last dozen years no extreme-music act has been as grand as these English evildoers, because despite their lineup and sound both being perennially in flux, the one constant is their tangible ambition to succeed. This has manifested itself in the past with everything from production as slick as hip-hop, to rhythmic vocal phrasing alien to the genre, to the introduction of a sexy girl singer, to an ever-improving theatrical stage show.

While these forays into crowd pleasing certainly differentiate the group from its murderous colleagues in the Nordic ’90s scene, and from the hardcore demo-trading black-metal masses, they also make it appealing to teen metal fans who have helped it sell hundreds of thousands of CDs in a field where bands usually sell a fraction of that. Sure it’s more satanish than satanic, but to its credit, the band is creepy, naughty and bombastic enough to hold onto its fans even when they graduate high school, so expect a full age spectrum of gloomy, black-clad headbangers tonight.

Last year Cradle of Filth released Thornography (Roadrunner), its first album in years, which is just a bunch of kick-ass tunes rather that a grandiose song cycle. With nods to industrial metal, symphonic theater-rock and even synth-pop (there’s an unexpected Heaven 17 cover), this likely will win the band new fans—and make the (oxymoronic) metal intelligentsia hate it even more.—Jake Austen