Cradle of Filth
Midian

THE REVIEW

Midian, an ancient cursed city hidden from the eyes of the world and a refuge for the depraved and deformed creatures. It is here that Cradle Of Filth chooses to set the fourth chapter of their saga, the last published by Music For Nations, the last of their classic period. The dominant tone of the artwork is no longer the grim black/blood of the brutal "Cruelty And The Beast" but a beautiful violet color that gives a wholly arcane and peculiar charm to the booklet's depictions, among which the band members stand out represented as deformed creatures. It was while listening to this album that I coined the term "filthy honeymoon," referring exactly to the perfect blend of metallic fury and gothic melody, which in the fascinating recesses of "Midian" gives life to a powerful and intriguing sound, hard in the right measure and crowned by stunning melodic openings that make this album the best possible introduction to the Cradle of Filth in all its splendor and eclecticism.

The album opens almost quietly with "At The Gates Of Midian," a symphonic intro not among the most memorable of Cradle, which, however, has the virtue of maximizing the most direct, devastating, hallucinating, and triumphant opener ever produced by Dani Filth's ensemble, namely "Cthulhu Dawn," in which the sublime Bard hisses and shrieks like an enraged king cobra, fervent in announcing the birth of a new hell on Earth while around him guitars, drums, choirs, and rocky orchestrations create a frenzied infernal sarabande all in crescendo, of apocalyptic momentum yet stylish and expressive of the crystal clear class of COF. Welcome to Midian, common mortals!

After this dazzling preamble, the album takes on its defined contours: medium-length compositions, elaborate, many tempo changes, strong gothic appeal and catchy melodies, well-calibrated sonic impetus, unparalleled Filthian Dark Magic: thus are born songs like the gorgeous and unjustly underrated "Saffron's Curse," boasting a music box attack of rare beauty that leads to a white weapon assault anticipating by eight years the atmospheres of "Tragic Kingdom," interrupted by a beguiling slow interlude that seems to unite the styles of "Dusk... And Her Embrace" and "Nymphetamine," or the more muscular and sparse "Death Magik For Adepts," with an organ practically following the entire composition, concluding with a magnificent interlude recited by Doug Bradley, now a regular COF guest.

It's impossible not to be fascinated by gothic art masterpieces like "Lord Abortion," a cobra that, after biting and poisoning with its first three minutes of granite riffs and vitriolic screaming, has fun inflating its hood and proudly displaying its gleaming and sinuous coils with hypnotic macabre dance choirs and masterfully recited parts by Dani Filth himself, who, unlike his phony colleagues, doesn't just scream or grunt nonsense about the greatness of Satan but really knows how to imprint a precise personality on the singing, reaching a unique timbric variety, with which he becomes a perfect interpreter of his wonderful lyrics. Even more gothic is "Amor e Morte," a gorgeous litany in which the two guitarists, the returning Paul Allender and the outgoing Gian Pyres draw riffs of great melodic taste in which the fury of "Cruelty And The Beast" now feels like a distant past. The differences with the Bathory-inspired predecessor are further emphasized in the instrumental interlude "Creatures That Kissed In Cold Mirrors," where you won't find voluptuous gasps or terrified screams, but only the arcane charm of the most gothic Cradle, which explodes in the sumptuous "Her Ghost In The Fog," introduced by a piano line that gives the listener the feeling of being still in the Embrace Of Dusk, a sensation that lasts only a few seconds because the song assumes its spectral form with Doug Bradley's narrations and Dani Filth's sensual singing duetting with a beautiful female voice that further enriches this dark Midian fairy tale, which will have its nymphaetaminic epilogue in "Swansong For A Raven." The only jarring detail is the fifty utterly pointless seconds of "Satanic Mantra," which, however, introduce "Tearing The Veil From Grace," which stands in the same relation to "Midian" as "Of Mist And Midnight Skies" does to "The Principle Of Evil Made Flesh," that is, it's the visionary apex of the disc, imagining the hypothetical rise to power of Midian's inhabitants, ethereal and solemn atmospheres in the intro, with a beautiful piano line and choirs of arcane beauty, followed by an increasingly hallucinated gallop all in crescendo, with the usual tempo changes that toss the listener from one scenario to another in a sublime pandemonium of beguiling and serpentine splendor, thus anticipating the album's closure, which arrives in the guitar slashings of "Tortured Soul Asylum," a dark and mighty anthem to the mythical cursed city.

In conclusion, I cannot claim that "Midian" is the absolute best expression of the Cradle of Filth (the Principle of Evil and the Dusk Embrace vie for leadership in a virtually impossible dispute to settle), but it is undoubtedly a standalone masterpiece that transcends all definitions of metal, gothic metal, symphonic metal, black metal, etc., Midian is Midian, it is the link between the old and the new Cradle Of Filth, without which songs like "Nemesis," "Nymphetamine," "The Byronic Man," "The Death Of Love," "The Promise Of Fever," just to name a few, wouldn't exist. Absolutely a must-have regardless of being a die-hard Cradle fan or not.