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Album Details

• Artist: Cradle Of Filth
• Album: The Principle Of Evil Made Flesh
• Label: Cacophonous
• Year of Release: 1994
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: solitaryman on 2012-11-17

When it comes to debuts, a band will typically show you their hand in it's entirety, or just a card or two. The difference can sometimes dictate the course of their entire career. Many shoot out of the gate and fizzle out unexpectedly, leaving a mark but not sticking around to reap the rewards. Others, such as Cradle of Filth, make an immediate impression that owes more to future promise than sudden excellence. While The Principle Of Evil Made Flesh is not technically the band's debut (several demos preceeded it), it was their first full-length effort and therefore their first full musical statement. And, for it's time and it's efforts, it was a bold statement indeed.



Already, the band was showing a deep love for the symphonic and orchestral elements that have long since defined their entire sound. Placed at various intervals throughout the album are darkly atmospheric interludes, unpolished and raw but containing within a certain abstract charm and elegance. In between these, the heart of Cradle of Filth's earliest efforts at constructing epic, interlocking themes of musical aggression and haunting atmospheres can be heard in it's most primitive form. Surely, much would change in the immediate future, the most notable difference being vocalist Dani Filth's approach to the microphone. Later known for his impressive range of growls, shrieks and various screams and shouts, seems here forcibly limited to muffled snarls and choked-back violent outbursts. Whether or not this was a learning curve on his part or done purposefully to make room in the production is unknown. Said production is, in a word, shoddy, but in a way that many black metal purists look positively at when they consider The Principle of Evil Made Flesh Cradle's only truly "black metal" album. I hesitate to call it such, as it was already evident that the band's influences ran far deeper than the likes of Emperor and Immortal. The songs themselves, while heavily hit-or-miss, do tend to lean towards the former. "The Forest Whispers My Name", "The Black Goddess Rises" (my personal favorite) and "Summer Dying Fast" are all highlights that the band would eventually go back and redo out of lasting love for the results.



At times sounding like the future Cradle Of Filth and at others truly sounding like a different band entirely, The Principle of Evil Made Flesh succeeded in creating a buzz around the band, whose unique combination of black, thrash and homegrown NWOBHM, offset with perverse and dark overtones was hard to ignore. But, as the future would show, this was nothing other than a stepping stone to a more polished and experienced outfit who would produce strikingly superior efforts.

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