DEFENDING THE TITLE OF THE BLACKEST AND BADDEST
Mirror, mirror, on the wall. Who's the blackest of them all? Why, Cradle of Filth, of course. England's most notorious and nefarious metal band are gearing up to release their darkest, most dastardly album of all, titled Godspeed on the Devil's Thunder, for Roadrunner Records on October 28. The album, which will have a special edition with an extra disc and bonus material, arrives just in time for Halloween, a holiday that fits Cradle of Filth's blackened, ghostly aesthetic.
The album is conceptual and is based on the well-documented, true-life fall from grace of a shadowy historical figure named Gilles de Rais, a wealthy French nobleman who was one of Joan of Arc's brothers-in-arms. He was best known, however, as a prolific serial killer who mixed prayers with his nightly murders as well as an aspiring alchemist. He was accused of a panoply of crimes, among them heresy, demonology and kidnapping. There's even an extreme fringe sect of historians who question de Rais' true status, with some convinced he was framed.
Regardless of viewpoint, leave it to Cradle of Filth to dissect de Rais' biography, exploring subversive, inflammatory historical subject matter in its lyrics, taking an unjaundiced look at a controversial figure in European history, set to epic black metal music. The band profiled Hungarian countess Elizabeth Bathory, who attempted to preserve her youth by bathing in the blood of virgins, in the past and now moves forward by framing their latest album around the story of de Rais.
Cradle of Filth's vocalist Dani Filth elaborated on the album's concept, saying, "By far this is our most extreme, dramatic and deeply disturbing album to date. The legend of Gilles de Rais has been given fresh, vampyrical life in this conceptual meisterwerk, swathed in pitch-black magic and a viciousness unsurpassed in the annals of Cradle history. Screw what our detractors say, everyone who has heard this album has bruised their jaws on the pentagram-bejewelled floor.
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The tracklisting for Godspeed on the Devil's Thunder is as follows:
In Grandeur And Frankincense Devilment Stirs
Shat Out Of Hell
The Death Of Love
The 13th Caesar
Tiffauges
Tragic Kingdom
Sweetest Maleficia
Honey And Sulphur.
Midnight Shadows Crawl To Darken Counsel With Life
10.
Darkness Incarnate
Ten Leagues Beneath Contempt
Godspeed On The Devil's Thunder
Corpseflower
Cradle of Filth follows up 2006's Thornography with a bigger, faster and louder conceptual new album. The band retains their hard-earned reputation as the best of the blackest with Godspeed on the Devil's Thunder.
