Red roses for the devil's whore? (Dusk And Her Embrace - Cradle Of Filth)

Member Name: xe2e2

Product:	Dusk And Her Embrace - Cradle Of Filth
Date:	07/08/08 (26 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great atmospheric metal and thought out orchestration

Disadvantages: Slightly gimmicky in places, may be offputting to people who prefer simplicity

Dusk... and her Embrace is sometimes regarded as Cradle of Filth's magnum opus and for good reason as well. On this album, the band take cues from the epic sonic nature of some Norwegian black metal bands like Emperor but inject their own sense of gothic romanticism influenced by literature and give extreme metal a very British edge whilst doing so.

This is evident from the first track "Humana Inspired to Nightmare" a tension-building song with dark sweeping strings and a haunting arrangement which segues into the alternating depressive subdued nature and riff and scream-dependent harshness of the appropriately titled "Heaven Torn Asunder". The next track "Funeral in Carparthia" takes the melancholic riffs of the previous song up a notch and allows them to envelop the listener. The combined classical arrangements and harsh metal of the charmingly titled "A Gothic Romance (Red Roses for the Devil's Whore)" are also appealing.

"Malice Through the Looking Glass" is of a similar vein, though there are more ambient and piano elements while "Dusk and Her Embrace" has a stronger atmospheric urgency with towering yet depressive riffs. "Graveyard by Moonlight" is another relatively charming instrumental with dreamlike piano yet disturbing elements in the composition. "Beauty Slept in Sodom" sounds relatively medieval at first but envelops into a song of crushing guitars and the final track, "Haunted Shores", is a long track stocked with brutality.

I prefer Dani Filth's vocals on this album to any other as they seem more poised and simultaneously tortured compared to their limited range on "The Principle of Evil Made Flesh" and their gimmickery on the albums following "Midian". The instrumentation is also top notch, particularly on the instrumentals which manage to sound convincingly medieval or baroque. Occasionally the reliance on spoken word can be a bit silly and unconvincing in places, but they can also sound powerful in others, while the sound effects of nightmare-like choirs and haunting laughing effects are competent enough not to sound over the top.

If you like metal music with an emphasis on atmosphere or emotion then I would recommend this album, but it may be offputting or even a little boring to extreme metal fans who prefer more primitive and violent black metal and technical and calculated heavy death metal. Cradle is also a band with a reliance on humour and literature so their lyrics on this album may be irritating to someone who takes heavy metal completely seriously. Some may also prefer the other albums too as this album is not as brutalised or heavy as the preceding ones nor is it as commercially accessible as the ones afterward but I feel that this is where CoF combined the two worlds quite well.

The other issue with the album compared to the others is that it is not entirely consistent as the song structures change very often and the songs are even longer than usual for CoF, which may again put off people who prefer simple, very catchy or short songs, though it should delight anyone who likes to listen to long drawn out periods of music listening.

Summary: A must have for fans of atmospheric or romantic heavy metal