Cradle of Filth - Midnight in the Labyrinth... (2012)

Cradle of Filth's music already has such a natural sweep and bombast to it that converting the metallics into sheer orchestration only seemed natural to me around the time Midnight in the Labyrinth, or Songs for the Recently Dead and Arisen showed up. This has always been a band refined at marketing, putting out elaborate products, focusing in hard on their videos, image, and so forth, and thus you shouldn't expect any less when they drop the heaviness to release a two-disc, 2 hour 20 minute collection of cuts across transformed into pure symphonic cheese from across their catalogue to date (in 2012). Unfortunately, while so much of this release is exactly what they promised, I can't help but feel that only the second of the two discs was actually necessarily...

Now, both of them are nearly identical, with the first one track longer, but the issue for me is that I had absolutely no interest in wanting to hear the narration from Dani Filth and Sarah Jezebel Diva. Filth is still putting sinister filters on his vocals as if he was still singing to the Gothic/black metal version, even going into a growl or two, and the whole thing seems boisterous, blustery and tremendously goofy. Did anyone really ask for this? One can certainly argue for the choir parts, they definitely contribute to the rousing evil feel of these epic compositions, but I am more than happy with the second disc, which simply converts a lot of the band's great tunes into pieces I can now use as a backdrop for a Gothic horror RPG, or even a glorified and more heavily produced dungeon synth album. Hearing "The Forest Whispers My Name", "Cruelty Brought Thee orchids" and "Dusk and Her Embrace" in this format is wonderful, really justifies the product, and they even keep the choirs though they are placed a little lower against the synthesized orchestra.

You can tell that some of the tunes here would be better with more natural instrumentation, but despite that I still think their material renders down to this version quite sincerely, as its obvious when they're composing a lot of the metal material they've got a Dark Wagnerian vision in mind to begin with. The organs and other tones simmer against the roiling storm-clouds of the bands' twisted British poetic imagination, making this perfect for a period piece vampire battle or some other Transylvanian epic, it's not all evil and creepy sounding, so bear that in mind; it's not such a great score for some unnerving Lovecraftian horror, but for something more historical it's wonderful. If only a little of the ego had been held in check, and they'd instead given us TWICE the songs in the pure instrumental/choral realm, this would be a home run release, but it ends up partly as corny as the digitized cover photo. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe there's a group of CoF devotees who really want to hear Dani's lustrous, demented narration while they bob for apples and compare spider-web tattoos, but I think Midnight in the Labyrinth is brought lower than its potential for this overindulgence.

Verdict: Indifference [6.5/10]

https://www.cradleoffilth.com/