Cradle of Filth : "Cryptoriana the Seductiveness of Decay"

These guys continue to polish what their brand of dark symphonic metal.
There is more double bass than blast beats. The guitar even finds a little groove on the second song. Some of the vocal phrasing you can hear the King Diamond influence on these guys. Dani Filth's vocals are less annoying than they used to be. He uses a wider array of vocal colors. The shrieks are just as accents. The guitar interplay is more more interesting on this album and the big symphonic keyboards are no taken to extremes. There bass player even does some pretty compelling work. So the fact this is making take note of their musicianship and I would not have really considered my self a fan of these guys speaks to the playing on this album.

Songwriting is still a mixed bag, as they already begin to lose me a little of the third song , which finds them firing on all cylinders but with no clear cut direction. It seems like the riffs are racing to no where. They allow the melody to breathe in "Wester Vespertine". They break into choral sections or female vocals, before going back into the kind of tight chugging that is their stock and trade. The title track fidns the band employing more iron maiden like riffs in a few place. It's was wise move to slow down leading into this song as it is less annoying when they are back at the speed of racing horses. When they find themselves in a more of a German thrashing mania, I can deal with the speed, but the choral accents don't have much of an impact and the solo is a little wanky.

The Night Wish like vocals that pop up along with the more gothic phrasing of"Vengeful Spirit" further accent the King Diamond influence. But speeding up feels like more of a cop out. They are more black metal on "You Will know the Lion By his Claw" . Sure it's more intense in terms of blast beats, but are we really covering any new ground here?  The stomp of "Death and the Maiden" has more of a hook to it making for a more engaging listen. They race through the rapid fire bark of "the Night at Catafalque" . Midway into the song I'm bored until it breaks down. But the melodrama sounds like the kind of goth metal that bands like Samael and Tiamat did better. I was looking forward to the cover of Annihilator's "Alison Hell" so it's going to be the vocal that fuck this up though the guitar tone lacks the muscle of Jeff Waters. They pretty much pull off all the guitar wizardry. Dani adds more of a growl to the vocal and doesn't hit the notes with the same vocal tone on the sung parts. Though the Alice scream in the middle is pretty good. Can he do this live is a good question. The girl comes in for the "sitting in the corner you were naked and alone" part which is a little bit of a let down. This also reaffirms the fact that Filth can not actually sing in the truest sense of the word. Overall I'll give this album a 7.5. Dimmu does what they do better, but the proved them selves musically to me on this one.