Cradle Of Filth Damnation And A Day CD

Ninth studio album & first for Sony Music. 17 tracks of furious black metal. 2003.

Cradle Of Filth: Dani Filth (vocals); Martin Powell (guitar, keyboards); Paul Allender (guitar); Dave Pybus (bass); Adrian Erlandsson (drums).
Additional personnel: Sarah Jezebel Diva (vocals); Dave McEwen (spoken vocals); The Budapest Film Orchestra And Choir.
What if a black metal band with a penchant for performance art and symphony-sized stage shows got a major label to back up and fund its perverted vision of apocalypse? The result would be something like Damnation and a Day, a metal album that features a 40-piece orchestra and 32-piece choir, but is still definitely extreme-sounding and can in no way be viewed as a sellout. Cradle of Filth was called a sellout long before they hooked up with Sony. Hardcore black metalers thought their stage show was too cartoony and Alice Cooper-like. That's true in a way -- the band's delivery of dark music comes filtered through a show that's more Cirque du Soleil than satanic. If any black metal band was ever going to be in league with the Beelzebub-owned music industry, it was Cradle of Filth. So not surprisingly, for their major-label debut the filthy ones have come up with a sprawling, 77-minute-long record. It has some grand-sounding moments and is recorded cleanly, with the symphonic and operatic elements being perhaps its best. But it is endless, and only a true Filth fan could tell one song from another. The song titles include "A Bruise Upon the Silent Moon," "The Promise of Fever," and "The Mordant Liquor of Tears," and obviously they are trying for something truly portentous with Damnation and a Day -- but it's a mess. Perhaps someone more level-headed at the record label or a gifted producer could have turned this into a record with real songs. As it is, it's a taxing, less-than-monumental work that won't win them many new mainstream fans, if that's at all what they had in mind. ~ Adam Bregman
In the beginning there was metal and it was heavy. In the mid-'80s an underground sub-genre made a name for itself based as much on satanic imagery as on extreme music, with bands like Bathory and Mayhem. Enter England's Cradle of Filth, who took black metal to new heights in the '90s. DAMNATION AND A DAY finds the band at the artistic pinnacle of its controversial career, with the unprecedented-for-the-genre support of Sony firmly behind them.
Forged with fire and brimstone, DAMNATION tells the biblical tale of temptation ("Serpent Tongue") and the revenge of outcasts ("Carrion"), a theme present in many Cradle albums, be the subjects cast out of society or heaven. Dani Filth's multifaceted whisper-to-a-scream vocals are operatic in scope and anguished with pain. Not unlike a more evil manifestation of Iron Maiden, double-time melodic riffs gallop and trample the senses. Brass-heavy orchestral interludes like a Verdi requiem and Karloff-esque spoken passages lend a horror-film quality. Goth ("Thank God For The Suffering") and Egyptian ("Doberman Pharaoh") vibes add depth and texture. DAMNATION is an all-out aural assault that will force you to take notice.

Kerrang (Magazine) (p.53) - "[T]his is an epic journey through the shadows that demands to be heard without distraction."