Review Summary: A shameful attempt at creating a great release, hugely hindered by the band's lack of creativity and signature over-theatric nature
After a run of solid-to-brilliant black metal albums utilizing a lot of gothic imagery and including some fantastic symphonic elements to their advantage, Cradle Of Filth appeared to run out of steam in the early 2000's. Whilst they still packed some punch, releases such as Damnation And A Day could not hope to live up to the legacy left behind by albums like Dusk And Her Embrace. From here on out, it was just a downward spiral for the highly popular UK black metal act. Ever since then, the band has been going further and further down hill, until they hit their absolute low point with 2006's Thornography. Despite still being a rather bad album, the release that followed this at least showed the band still had it in them to put out something listenable, and in 2010 they attempted to put out something worth listening to once again.
Darkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa is as theatric and over-complicated as should have come to be expected of a Cradle Of Filth record by this point. The keyboards are still there, swirling around in the background, attempting to create an aura of mystery and send chills up the listener's spine. Meanwhile, the guitars are thick in the mix with the staple tremolo picked guitar riffs mingling with some slower, groove-based guitar lines whilst the drummer thrashes away on the skins in the background. Meanwhile, Dani Filth is still as over-the-top in his delivery as ever. All the elements that have been featured on Cradle's works for many years now return for this album, but everything about this release feels forced.
The guitar work is at least semi-praise worthy in the sense that the leads do a little to spice up the album. Scattered throughout this release is the occasional well-written lead melody that at least does assure the listener that Mr. Allender has some talent to his name, but unfortunately it is all-too-often drowned out by the abysmal instrumental performance of the other members of the band. My main complaint with this record is the same one that could be leveled at each and every release the band has put out since Midian - the godforsaken keyboards. Not only are the attempted-creepy sounding keyboards abused far too regularly here, the tingling background noise that they once provided has been cranked up to the point that they are so prominently mixed they are all that will register with you at first. The way the keyboardist bashes away at the instrument is ridiculous, taking away any element of mystery and intrigue that could be garnered were they used correctly, and instead it hinders the flow and the overall cohesiveness of the record.
The attempts at grandeur on this release are laughable. Many of these songs are flooded by an abundance of samey-sounding riffs and generic drum beats that the band has done so many times before on past releases that they become stale. Dani shrieks his lyrical content with his usual array of vocal styles whilst the band cram so many different instruments and ideas together at once that the songs fall apart at the seams. Once again, there are the occasional female vocal snippets that do little but persuade the listener that they would rather here Dani's feminine shrieks over this twaddle any day.
Unfortunately, Cradle's attempt at putting something semi-listenable out once more has ended in disaster, with a release that feels forced and too ambitious an theatric. Outside of the guitar leads, there really is very little nice that can be said for this release as we have heard every element of the sound the band went for on this album too many times before, and it is just as dull and uninspired as can be found anywhere in music.
