I have accumulated many personal reviews while listening to albums. My reviewing style is non-conventional and was only intended for myself. Sometimes I will only use one sentence to describe an album if I feel that is all that's required. Other times I will review an album while I'm still listening to it, leading to a song-by-song review of the album (bringing the size of the review to nearly dissertation-level). There are times when I will even come back to a review to add information that I didn't know when originally writing the review. The point is that I won't edit my reviews to make them more readable or conventional. My reviews are always a direct result of what I was feeling when I wrote them and I want to let that feeling come through.



Monday, June 20, 2011

Cradle of Filth - Damnation and a Day [2003]

Production is certainly heavier, but for some reason "The Promise of Fever" feels like it isn't centered properly... I'll let it slide since it may be my version of the file. "Hurt and Virtue" starts off with pandering to the faggy melodic metal crowd, killing the evil attempts of the music. Definitely a very weak song. "An Enemy Led the Tempest" picks things up just a bit, but the main riff is fairly stock and lifeless. "Better to Reign in Hell" finally changes things up a bit with some kind of creativity calling on the clean guitars and spacey effects. Orchestra effects are fairly well-placed and sparse enough that they don't feel overused. One thing that has been bugging me is that the production quality of the guitars keeps changing, and not just between songs, but within the song as well. It's not a BAD album at all. However, it doesn't have the same bite, ferocity, and grandeur of previous albums. It's watered-down; a handful of very good riffs evenly distributed on an album with wall-paper paste to fill in the majority of the time. It's a damn shame, because it is obvious that A LOT more effort was put into the arranging and selection of effects and keys. Obnoxiously, the album seems to slowly settle back down into what made CoF good as the music goes on. So, skip the crap and go straight to the middle-end. Standout tracks are "Present from the Poison-Hearted", "The Promise of Fever", "Doberman", and "Babylon A.D.".

Rating: 7.25

http://theorderofthedragon.com/

All ratings are out of 10. Rating may not be a whole number.

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