REVIEW: CRADLE OF FILTH, GODSPEED ON THE DEVIL’S THUNDER
Monday, October 13th, 2008 at 2:00pm by David Bee Roth
Two years have passed and just like clockwork another Cradle of Filth album has been shat out of hell into our apprehensive laps. Fuck! I just got these pants dry-cleaned from Thornography.
Thankfully breaking the cycle of less-than-clever album title puns, Godspeed on the Devil’s Thunder is Dani Filth and the gang’s attempt at making yet another concept album about a medieval noble serial killer a decade after the release of their Elizabeth Bathory story, Cruelty and the Beast. With the subtitle The Life and Crimes of Gilles de Rais (guess I spoke to soon about the punning), the band crudely attempts to provide the biography for a nobleman turned sexual deviant turned Satanist turned blah blah blah. While de Rais sounds like he was a real piece of work, this album is pretty scary, too: Godspeed is a frighteningly long album that sounds disturbingly outdated with a shocking absence of dynamics in the concept.
I’ll start with the latter criticism, because I feel it’s important to underline what is a bigger problem than Cradle of Filth; too many metal bands are writing concept albums and too many of them do not understand what that means. If a conventional album is a collection of songs that can stand independent of each other, a concept album presupposes that each track acts as a part of a continuing exploration of a theme or narrative. The whole release is more important than its individual pieces and this is usually emphasized through seamless track transitions, recurring music or other dynamics. When executed thoughtfully, a concept album can lend immense artistic credibility to an act, however the lure of this sort of legitimacy leads to a lot failures, too.
Godspeed suffers from a double failure of being a poorly executed concept album from a band that is long past its modest peak. All too many of the thirteen tracks are completely interchangeable and without intelligible lyrics (even the clean and choral singing), so there’s no sense of progression. Being seemingly aware of the inadequacy of their music to convey the story, they made the brutal decision to hire the guy who played Pinhead in Hellraiser to provide narration as Gille de Rais. This occurs ad nauseum in an intro track, an outro track and at the end of almost every goddamn track, grinding the album to a halt and always with a keyboard accompaniment.
Oh, and the keyboards! While this is fairly extreme album (read: blast beats) that nods towards the band’s earlier material, they’ve seemingly kept the same keyboard rig since the mid 90s. The orchestration is painful to listen to. Predictable orchestra hits and one finger noodling melodies combine with disgusting synthesized strings and a piano setting that sounds anything but grand. The compositions during the aforementioned narrative interludes would be embarrassing in a student film soundtrack and instead of adding subtle ambiance it becomes nothing more than a distracting cliché.
Cradle of Filth is otherwise as cheesy as they ever were: that mixture of suburban Halloween horror, Dani’s many cheesy vocal varieties, all combine with those fucking keyboards and the narration to give you enough mozzarella to make a pizza. Unfortunately for them, the world has moved on and it all seems so incredibly dated now. These days, there are better keyboards, broader concept albums, sharper chorus hooks and (get this) RIFFS!
While “Midnight Shadows…” breaks from the repetitive song arrangements to add some of the drama this band was able to pull off in old classics like “Her Ghost in the Fog” and “Cruelty brought thee Orchids”, finding this gem in the middle of over an hour of uninspired crap isn’t worth the effort. I guess Halloween was a lot scarier when you were a kid, anyway.
(1 ½ horns out of five)
-DBR
Shit, I thought it was gonna get at least a 3. I can’t say I’m TOO surprised though. Cradle of Filth have been in and out of their prime for a while now.
haha, whats new?
Wow, I never saw this one coming, especially after the virtual blowjob Dani Filth got last week from this site.
This entire review sounds like it was written by someone who just doesn’t like Cradle of Filth and had no business reviewing one of their cds because he wasn’t going to like it regardless.
Dude I don’t think Kye even listened to “Thornography”. COF is TOTALLY cheesy. They aren’t even Black Metal anymore. I think you’d get more 2-stepping than circle pits at their shows. STRAIGHT FAILURE.
I DID listen to Thornography, and yes, it was cheesy. In fact, I won’t disagree that the band is rather cheesy…but I think that’s their intention at this point. Kinda like power metal.
Regardless, I think this review set out to bash them from the beginning regardless of the musical output. Cause I HAVE heard Godspeed and as far as Cradle albums go, it’s better than pretty much anything they’ve released in years…and this is coming from somebody that thinks Nymphetamine rocks.
Also, they were NEVER black metal. They had the influence at one point, but they’ve definitely never been part of that scene.
And on that same note, 2-stepping? Really? At what point did Cradle become core?
Black Metal isn’t cheesy?
Hell did that happen? Was I on the john?
Not surprised anyway, though I don’t like CoF, they aren’t “metal” enough to get a good review here.
Holy shit!
“The world has moved on”!?
Was that short short quip a reference to The Gunslinger? One of the only things worth a shit Stephen King ever wrote? God, please let it be so.
P.S. The problems you described with this album sound exactly like the problems everyone has described with every Cradle album. They’re almost good, but for whatever reason they just keep pulling punches. Mabe next time, gents. (But probably not.)
I left a “y” out of the word maybe. What a poser I grew up to be.
I got a laugh out of “lack of intelligible lyrics” – doesn’t that describe the majority of metal, and the majority of the stuff the proprietors of this site, nutswing so hard? I can’t see calling that a negative aspect of this album when just about all the music recommended on here consists of nothing but “urrr”, “guhhhhhhhhh”, “hugbhbehburheburbuehbruebreeeee!”, and amalgamations thereof.
CoF has never really been “part of the group” in the metal scene. They’re sorta like an outsider bastard stepson. I don’t particularly like their stuff, but I agree with Rev (and don’t even fucking start, bub) that because of the fact that they’re not a vogue band, reviews of their newest album will be inherently biased against them before the music even starts.
As far as CoF being cheesy…..well, fuck, most metal IS cheesy as hell. CoF is no worse than a band like Kamelot or Epica when it comes to cheesiness, but who fucking cares? Seriously? Anyone who points to metal band and says, “That is cheesy, I don’t like it!” shouldn’t be listening to metal at all.
Nothing I’ve heard so far from this album fits with anything you said against it… even sounds like GSOTDT is far superior than last two albums…
A second opinion from someone a little more into the band please…
Vlad – you missed the memo. The only stuff the guys around here review that they like is deathcore shit, and Textures. Everything else = shit.
I never expect anything positive in any review here unless it’s one of the -core bands the reviewers nuthug. I read the reviews because I find what people say, who are categorically unable to enjoy more than one very narrow band of a single genre of music, to be unintentionally hilarious.
I find review comments to be unintentionally hilarious.
Have to agree with DemonicLemming here.
Plus Cradle of Filth is a love or hate band. You either get them or you don’t.
Not true blackmetal? Seriously people are still beating that drum? Fuck off, if I wanted every band to sound like Venom I’d just listen to Venom wouldn’t I.
stop being tools you obviously cant appreciate COF and their works…your flat out dissing them..this isnt a reviwe this is just another way of expressing your obvious hate for the band get a life you wanker
I haven’t heard the new album, but I dig just about every other album they’ve released. I agree with Kye and Morgue-an, and even DemonicLemming for that matter. Metal tends to be kinda cheesy, and I think it’s even worse when a band starts taking themselves too seriously. CoF creates solid tunes, Dani’s lyrical ability is unique and hard to find in this genre, and I find that bands who consider themselves “black metal” often take themselves too seriously, and end up being bad cheese. :)
Keep up the good work, CoF, and maybe DBR should keep to reviewing bands that he has a modicum of respect for, instead of shitting all over a good band that he doesn’t get.
Can’t wait to hear the new album, guys. Keep up the good work!!!
I think I missed the memo. Last time I checked reviews were just that. You looked at what you were going to review until you basically memorized it, and then reviewed it. What did they do well? What could have been better? Was it good or bad all in all? You know, give your honest opinion. This isn’t a review, it’s an open, uncaring, and not well written rip on CoF. When you review something, if you’re worth a shit as a reviewer, you should be able to do it honestly and not allow your bias against whatever you’re reviewing show through. This was an epic failure. Personally, I like CoF. Are they cheesy? Sure. Is their music still good? Of course. I have to agree with Morgue-An here, CoF is a love/hate band. You love ‘em or hate ‘em. There’s no middle ground. My honest opinion? If you absolutely don’t like the artist, then don’t review them. If you have too, then honestly review them, don’t waste people’s time with a four paragraph shit-session against someone. They’re still famous and selling out concerts, so they must be good at what they do.
dont give up the day job… this review sucks, not metal. If you don’t like metal then fine, not everybody is that lucky, but do you really have to go on about it? Why not create a site about whatever shit you listen to instead. I agree with RDS…
this guy needs to go back to his backstreet boys albums and leave metal to the pros.
This kid doesn’t get the band…stfu dude.
godspeed is one of the best that cradle has made. kick ass music. who ever wrote this is just upset he is not like cradle
Well everybody is entitled, he obviously enjoys the older works which were more reticent of old dark horror, which is why I preferred the older works, partially he is correct…. They used to be more dedicated and more deep into the music. They also had lyrical masterpieces. Paul is good at writing, just not this type of music. Paul is good at instruments. He was an original member. During the demo period and principal period. They should never have left the older-complex-theatrical and darker sound. The old songs were not predictable… The lyrics were very much Milton-Byronesque….
Principle*
[...] David Bee Roth’s not-so-stellar review of Cradle of Filth’s new album Godspeed on the Devil’s Thunder — which comes out tomorrow on Roadrunner Records — sure pissed a lot of you off. Seems that Dani Filth’s claim in our interview with him over the summer was dead on; you either love the band or you hate ‘em. Same goes for old Cradle vs. new Cradle; as is the case with pretty much any band that’s been around for as long as CoF have, there seems to be a deep divide amongst the band’s fans over which of the band’s eras is the best. [...]
Don’t talk trash about a band that beats you hands down. The album is great and if you think it sucks then I would like to see you do better.
The review blew…
Yeah this review sucked so much I don’t think I’ll ever read another review from this site. I mean I like COF but I am not so happy about the new album yet I’m not putting them done either, it’s good stuff. If you don’t like the band don’t review their albums. And they are not Black Metal and never were and it doesn’t take a music genious to figure that out, cof has acknowledged this theirselves.
That`s a crappy review!!!
Who is this guy to state what constitutes a conceptual album with such authority?? Iron Maiden`s Seventh Son of A Sevent Son is kinda a conceptual album to me, and there are songs that stand over the rest, and these can be listened and enjoyed without having to trace connections with the lyrical and musical content from the rest of the record, what about Pink Floyd`s The Wall for that matter?
It seems to me that most of COF detractors are just narrow minded fuckers that have never payed any attention to the music itself, but to the whole ultra-vicious infidel image that the band have displayed through the years. Come on, that`s just bussiness!!
Who could claim to defend primieval raw black metal these days?? When even essential bands like Darkthrone and Satyricon have abandoned their ways of old in order to craft new music and styles.
If you really want to check out a band that has really punched black metal in the face, listen to Enslaved`s Vertebrae. That`s a shitty boring album where all traces of aggresiveness and speed have been lost forever and replaced for a doomy pseudo-progressive lullabie that might keep you interested for a track or two but that becomes unbearable as the record goes on. Too bad for the viking lords!!
If an album as dull as Vertebrae can get world-wide acclaims, and nominations to the metal album of the year blah blah blah, how come COF`s effort to re-discover their more aggresive and fast facade can get such a shitty review???
[...] of my eyes. Hell, even the tracks off Gospeed on the Devil’s Thunder, which I outright panned in my review last year, were a little easier to [...]
“…racks are completely interchangeable and without intelligible lyrics …”
Jesusu fuckin Christ….who put this man to review the album??? Goddaamn, wanna talk bout cliches? Then talk about Dimmu Borgir and their childish videos, talk about 98% metal bands who talks about chains, chicks, blood, satan, booze… don’t give me that bullshit.
Cradle of Filth, Emperor (Ihsahn too), Bal Sagoth … some of the few bands that have a decent lyrics.
What is the true metal nowadays? Nada! You can’t compare everything with Master of Puppets….or any other 80s tune. That time has passed, ya know… OVER.
Stop being “true metalhead” and enjoy the music (for fuck sake)
I think Cradle get too much stick for not being black metal – the people who make this accusation forget that other bands they listen to e.g. Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Judas Priest etc are not exactly full scale tr00 black metal onslaughts either and have, in fact, sold FAR more records than Cradle.
However it doesn’t sound to me like David Bee Roth is simply a Cradle hater. I doubt he ever really loved them but at the same time he does admit that some of their older stuff was better than this in his opinion (he refers to them having a “peak”, albeit a modest one). Personally I just think Cradle have gone through too many lineup changes and kicked out too many good musicians on the way, and in recent years I’ve lamented the relentless overuse of keyboards and female vocals (the older stuff wasn’t quite as bad for this), but I do quite like this album. Shat out of Hell is an awesome tune, as are many others on here, and it’s a massive improvement on Thornography and its one decent tune (Dirge Inferno).
Wow, I really used too many brackets there!
It’s always the same gothic shit, the damn narrations and some other annoying things they can’t just forget about. Even if the rest is good, you can’t ignore they ruined the album. It’s still enjoyable, and still the review sucked.