Cradle Of Filth: Manticore & Other Horrors

A monster mash – Filth style.

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Cradle Of Filth have never been afraid of different approaches to their extreme metal. And so it is on Manticore..., their best album since 1998’s Cruelty & The Beast.

The Filth have gone for a monster concept, each track dealing with a different entity from the dark side, bringing to life vampires (Pallid Reflections), lycanthropes (Illicitus) and the manticore (on the title track).

Mixing orchestration with venomous fury, it all comes together impressively, spinning a web of nightmarish gaiety. Despite dancing with ghouls and demons, the album has a real sense of fun – the audio equivalent of a classic Hammer horror movie.

Anyone who hangs around graveyards is gonna love its black humour.

Malcolm Dome
Malcolm Dome

Malcolm Dome had an illustrious and celebrated career which stretched back to working for Record Mirror magazine in the late 70s and Metal Fury in the early 80s before joining Kerrang! at its launch in 1981. His first book, Encyclopedia Metallica, published in 1981, may have been the inspiration for the name of a certain band formed that same year. Dome is also credited with inventing the term "thrash metal" while writing about the Anthrax song Metal Thrashing Mad in 1984. With the launch of Classic Rock magazine in 1998 he became involved with that title, sister magazine Metal Hammer, and was a contributor to Prog magazine since its inception in 2009. He died in 2021.