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Just a year after the successful "Cruelty and the Beast", an album that brought Cradle of Filth the well-deserved success, Mr. Dani Filth's band is preparing not only to enjoy the glories achieved (among them being more popular than colleagues Dimmu Borgir), but also to focus on which direction to channel their future works. While waiting for what will later emerge in Midian, COF releases an EP (dated 1999) of transition between the old and the new, and the result is "From the Cradle to Enslave", with a title crafted almost to symbolize that the band's dark aura enslaves from the origins.
The journey begins with the title track that gives its name to the album: the impact does not deviate much from what we are usually accustomed to hearing, that is, that mix of black, German-style thrash, and a bit of dreamlike gothic. The presence of female choirs and in particular of the faithful vocalist Sarah Jezebel Deva enrich this piece with pathos, alternating slow parts with fast and aggressive parts expertly played by ex-At The Gates Adrian Erlandsonn, a steady member of COF after the departure of the missed Nicholas Barker. The second track "Of Dark Blood and F**king" confirms what has been said above, just a bit more violent and "blackie". But the real surprises are yet to come with "Death Comes Ripping", a hardcore-flavored cover of Danzig, but which COF makes its own, and the priceless "Sleepless", another cover of Anathema, where Robin Graves's bass line, assisted by Lector Smith's keyboards, cradles the verse until an explosion of the chorus, where Gyan and Stuart's guitars screech along with Dani Filth's sharp voice. There remains an experimental song like "Perverts Church (From the Cradle to Deprave)", born of a "electronically" perverse process seemingly by Nick Barker (many have turned up their noses at this techno/dance experiment), and a decent quality live rendition of "Funeral in Carpathia".
The disc ends here and the question that arises the most is (was): what direction will COF take after this albeit brief parenthesis? Time will give the answer in that year 2000, when Midian will be released and everyone will be able to notice the progress made by the English vampires. Lastly, this nice EP is recommended to the band's fans, but also to non-fans, provided they judge COF by their other works and not by this one.
Tracklist and Lyrics
01 From the Cradle to Enslave (06:36)
Two thousand fattened years like maniacs
Have despoiled our common grave
Now what necrophagous Second Coming backs
From the cradle to enslave?
Sickle constellations
Stud the belts that welt the sky
Whilst the Bitter winter moon
Prowls the clouds, dead-eyed
Like shifting parent flesh
Under silk matricide...
Watchful as she was upon Eden
Where every rose arbour and orchard she swept
hid the hissing of a serpent Libido
In an ancient tryst with catastrophe
Soon to be kept
Hear that hissing now on the breeze
As through the plundered groves of the carnal garden
A fresh horror blows
But ten billion souls
Are blind to see the rotting wood for the trees
This is the theme to a bitter Armageddon
Nightchords rake the heavens
Pandaemonaeon
And what use are prayers to that �god�?
As devils bay concenus for the space to piss
On your smouldering faith
And the the mouldering face
Of this world long a paradise lost
This is the end of everything
Hear the growing chora that a new dawn shall bring
Dance macabre �neath the tilt of the zodiac
Now brighter stars shall reflect on our fate
What sick activities will be freed when those lights burn black?
The darkside of the mirror always threw our malice back...
I see the serpentine in your eyes
The nature of the beast as revelations arrive
Our screams shall trail to Angels
For those damned in flames repay
All sinners lose their lot on Judgement Day
We should have cut our losses as at Calvary
But our hearts like heavy crosses held the vain belief
Salvation, like a promised nation
Gleamed a claim away...
This is the end of everything you have ever known
Buried like vanquished reason
Death in season
Driven like the drifting snow
Peace, a fragile lover, left us fantasising war
On our knees or another fucker�s shore
Heiling new flesh
Read, then roared
To a crooked cross and a Holy Cause
What else be whipped to frenzy for?
This is the end of everything
Rear the tragedies
That the Seraphim shall sing
Old adversaries
Next of Eve
Now they're clawing back
I smell their cumming
As through webbed panes of meat
Led by hoary Death
They never left
Dreaming sodomies
To impress on human failure
When we've bled upon our knees
Tablatures of gravel law
Shall see Gehennah paved
When empires fall
And nightmares crawl
From the cradle to enslave...
This is the end of everything
02 Of Dark Blood and Fucking (06:02)
Sister midnight comes blaspheming
Screaming in the keys of faith and fear
Unentwining our spines twists me to kneeling...
Spilling like the moonlight on her glistening rear
Defiled at heart
In this perfect hell
Under red leaves bleeding
Over scaled chateau we fell
To demonocracy
Where neither Adam or Eve
Conceived of such iniquities
From pleasure or pain
Or the razor's edge inbetween
Thou art my seventh heaven burning
Going down as with the sun...
Within like a river fluids moves a torrent
Bound to please
On denierred knees
In any wicked way
That her whims may warrant
I hang on every verb
Every dirty word
Interred
In her pornoglossa...
Christlike, whipped and weak
Painted nails driven through the meek
Yet in obituary
My dreams still weep
Of dark blood and f**king thee
Thou art seventh heaven burning
Going down as with the day
Baring lunar curvature
Like canvas for a lick of pain
Writhing like a viper
Deep inside her Eden
Forbidden to eat
I kiss leylines to her feet
Then baiting wrath
I steal a path
Back to the fruits of her womb
Back to the crack of her tomb...
Her roseate sliver
Quivers with snuff appeal
The torque of her hips
Lip-sync me in for the kill
Tongue-tied, tightrope and spread like disease
I drain the cup of this Miss Sire
Her water into wine for me
Thou art my seventh angel squirming
'Neath the forked tongue of the beast
Arching toward the fabled
Like a sculptured nymph seeking base relief...
Whilst the world outside
(A wood of suicide)
Would die for this release
Our slow orgasmic fuses greet...
By night and by candle
At each other's throat
In a slick drift of red
Setting god's teeth on edge
We were as wolves preying inside the fold
Of a slaughtered lamb throw
On a four poster bed...
Succulent, Succubus
Laid without rest
In the dead of the night
Succulent, Succubus
In thy arms
And thy wetness
On glossed lips I taste
Conspiracies, secrecies, sorceries laced
With thick unguent rum
Black-rayed suns and Autumn
Always in season for our nightfall from grace
Gorge upon my seed
Starved Persephone
Succulent, Succubus
Succour me.
That I might keep
Thee with me in Hades
Succulent, Succubus
Succour me
04 Sleepless (04:19)
And I often sigh
I often wonder why
I'm still here
And still I cry
And I often cry
I often spill a tear
Over those not here
But still they are so dear
Please ease my burden
And I still remember
The memory and I weep
In my broken soul
The scars they cut so deep
Please ease my burdenx2
Surely without war
There should be no loss
Theres no mourning or fear, no pain, no misery
No sleepless nights missing the dead, oh no more
No more war
There must be no war
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