Cradle Of Filth are one of the great British heavy metal bands. From their beginnings in the dank depths of the early 1990s as vampire-fixated black metal hobgoblins, they’ve blossomed – if that’s the right word –into the Hammer Horror Iron Maiden.
Cryptoriana is a cinematic epic draped in shades of black and blood red, heavy on the orchestration and gothic camp. The nails-down-a-blackboard extremity of the past is still there but it’s a long way from front and centre, while frontman Dani Filth has dialled down his Nazgul shriek in favour of a cracked croon. There’s little ground they haven’t covered before, whether that’s the old school Steve Harris gallop of The Seductiveness Of Decay or the choral interlude of Achingly Beautiful, but no one does it quite like them.
