Album review: Cradle Of Filth – The Screaming Of The Valkyries

Fourteen albums in, Cradle Of Filth’s greatest talent has become their refusal to be taken too seriously. Back in the day, the Suffolk shit-stirrers cultivated and luxuriated in the image of extreme metal as a devilishly decadent netherworld, provoking outsiders with merch featuring masturbating nuns, or by wearing ‘I Love Satan’ T-shirts to the Vatican.

More recently, they’ve turned that gaze inward, taking the mickey out of po-faced metal bros by munching Cheerios alongside Bring Me The Horizon and promising a paradigm-shifting collab with pop icon Ed Sheeran. Even when matters have been taken out of their hands, such as at the 2009 Bloodstock headline cut short due to a guitarist being felled by a missile from the crowd, there has been a sense of uncanny absurdity. Said projectile was a giant gobstopper.

The Screaming Of The Valkyries revels in its balance between trademark infernal high-theatricality and subtler, self referential subversions. Take rampant opener To Live Deliciously, for instance. “The song is about the celebration of life,” evangelised frontman Dani Filth on release. “Of indulging in everything unfettered from the conformities of religion, fashion or state. Free from guilt or constraint. As nature intended.” But it’s also a lurid tribute to modern horror icon – and goat – Black Phillip via unabashedly formulaic reworking of the same symphonic gothic black metal they’ve lived off for over three decades.

Demagoguery sandwiches some classic panto-villain rasping from Dani between slabs of 100mph chaos. Waltzing highlight Non Omnis Moriar (‘Not All Of Me Will Die’) weaves folky threads into an agelessly blackened tapestry. Then the excellent White Hellebore ups both the aggro and the sinister/sexy lyricism – ‘Who could ever have known the score? / The bitter neath the sweet / The bittersweet necrosis / The deep erotic wounds she bore’ – before Magnificent Perfection cranks the melodrama gleefully over the top.

Piledriving into late banger Ex Sanguine Draculae, the onslaught of buzzsaw riffs, classic metal gallop and billowing shred is truly impressive. As they roll on into more histrionic closer When Misery Was A Stranger, though, it’s impossible not to be reminded of why Cradle have always been such an acquired taste: the maximalist combination of extremist bombast, offbeat atmosphere and operatic shrieking simply too much for many listeners. For those accustomed to Cradle’s faintly silly brand of blood and cheese, mind, this’ll go down a treat.

Verdict: 3/5

For fans of: Dimmu Borgir, Arch Enemy, Children Of Bodom

The Screaming Of The Valkyries is out now via Napalm