Live Bait for the Dead (Live Bait For The Dead - Cradle Of Filth)

Member Name: Frankingsteins

Product:	Live Bait For The Dead - Cradle Of Filth
Date:	24/05/08 (10 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Solid live performance with fair coverage of studio albums.

Disadvantages: Wholly predictable, and second disc is mostly pointless.

Unfortunately coming slightly too late to be the definitive live Cradle of Filth album, released well into the band's artistic decline, 'Live Bait for the Dead' still boasts an impressive range of material from the band's entire discography up to this point, even if their modern style will interfere a little too much with the classics for old-school fans' tastes. Balancing then-current songs such as the mediocre singles 'Her Ghost in the Fog' and 'From the Cradle to Enslave' with older, more violent offerings 'Ebony Dressed for Sunset' and 'Summer Dying Fast' and gothic extravaganzas in the form of 'Dusk and Her Embrace' and 'Queen of Winter, Throned,' this captures most of what was good about Cradle of Filth in their early career, with a few acceptable inclusions from more recent years that at least catch the band just before they became really bad.

The second disc is an odd inclusion, and although it helps to bulk out the set, it presumably did the same thing to the price, and isn't really worth it. The remixes are either pointless, as is the case for the near-identical 'No Time to Cry' and 'Born in a Burial Gown,' the latter clearly just being milked as the current single, or awful like the hideous industrial rock remix of 'From the Cradle to Enslave.' 'Deleted Scenes of a Snuff Princess' is an attempt at something radically different in the form of a fully-fledged underground dance track, but like the band's earlier 'Pervert's Church' it simply sounds too out of place and not particularly accomplished in any case, and the only truly decent songs here are the soundchecks of the classic 'Funeral in Carpathia' and not-quite-classic 'Nocturnal Supremacy,' which benefit from the extra energy of the as-live performance.

Disc 1

1. The Ceremony Opens (Intro)
2. Lord Abortion
3. Ebony Dressed for Sunset
4. The Forest Whispers My Name
5. Cthulhu Dawn
6. Dusk and Her Embrace
7. The Principle of Evil Made Flesh
8. Cruelty Brought Thee Orchids
9. Her Ghost in the Fog
10. Summer Dying Fast
11. Creatures That Kissed in Cold Mirrors (Interlude)
12. From the Cradle to Enslave
13. Queen of Winter, Throned

Disc 2

1. Born in a Burial Gown (The Polished Coffin mix)
2. No Time to Cry (Sisters of No Mercy mix)
3. Funeral in Carpathia (soundcheck recording)
4. Deleted Scenes of a Snuff Princess
5. Scorched Earth Erotica (original demo version)
6. Nocturnal Supremacy (soundcheck recording)
7. From the Cradle to Enslave (Under Martian Rule mix)
8. The Fire Still Burns (Twisted Sister cover)

Summary: Cradle of Filth's first live album (2002).