Metal Shock Finland (World Assault )

Track listing:
1.     “The Cult of Venus Aversa”
2.     “One Foul Step From the Abyss”
3.     “The Nun With the Astral Habit”
4.     “Retreat of the Sacred Heart”
5.     “The Persecution Song”
6.     “Deceiving Eyes”
7.     “Lilith Immaculate”
8.     “The Spawn of Love And War”
9.     “Harlot On A Pedestal”
10.     “Forgive Me Father (I Have Sinned)”
11.     “Beyond The Eleventh Hour”

Released on November 1, 2010 by Peaceville Records.

Back in the day, when the black metal scene seemed born of black-and-white pictures copulating with guts-red pandemonia, it still shocked us all. But let’s face it, it’s 2010 nowadays, the Church is all but harmless and Evil itself has helplessly grown bored of being evil. The show fell flat: Black suits it perfectly when it comes to sporting contemporary Gucci elegance whereas sped-up disorder and charred remains seem always the right arrangement when you need the right background for your campaign-against-poverty photo session of choice. Something white American Republicans would be proud of indeed. Thus you have to say something else if you’re not going to end up, face-painted and black-nailed, drinking Martini with the local bishop at the Save-the-World party your politician has thrown for the sake of YOUR own black metal-drenched survival.

Over-announced and exhaustingly anticipated, “Darkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa” is, in spite of all the hype and the evidence that Hell has been failing to shock for ages now, what you have to say if you’re going to survive yourself without troubling politicians, celebrities and Catholic priests. It’s no secret that, sincere and im-pure as they might have been, the majority of the bands that had sworn blind fidelity to the scene couldn’t make it thus far for the one and provable fact that they were swallowed for good by their own savage hunger in accordance with that infamous one-way wrath of theirs, which at length proved hopeless and self-annoying rather than dangerous for society.

The “live fast, die young” cliché works only if you happen to be called Jim Morrison (you die, you’re Myth) or Keith Richards (you outlive yourself and your contemporaries, you’re Myth), but we’re talking heavy metal here and, like it or not, the Myth is not enough, nor is the Devil. “It’s got to be in your blood”, guitarist and chief composer Paul Allender has said in a recent interview, and after a 16-year career of outstanding riffs and the best black metal songs ever, it should dawn on us all that we’d better believe him.

In fact, Cradle Of Filth 2010 are to be taken quite seriously: not an enemy of public morality but a real band comprised of six real musicians who write, arrange and record real music; not a shock combo for pious and well-educated parents to warn their pious and well-educated children against, but a credible entity that oozes with musicianship, passion, accelerated poetry, self-irony and the largest palette of colours and shades of the entire, not anymore feared, scene.

So let’s face it again, the music has finally won in spite of the provocation and Dani Filth’s astonishingly well written lyrics, even when purposely sinister and obscure, are something way more interesting and stimulating than any black metal topic to date. And thank you God. Paradoxical although it seems, “Darkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa”, with its eleven little gems – fast, lyrical to extremes, zealous, impressively orchestrated and arranged, tenderly violent, fascinating, percussively unstoppable… – is Truth over Myth, song after song washing the make-up (namely: the Myth) away to reveal its real countenance at last. And the truth is it’s not about the hype, nor is it about its contrary; it’s not about the face-painting, nor is it about whatever, though still strong and somewhat disturbing, hellish imagery. The truth is that at the end of the day, when you’ve made your peace with your own demons, “Darkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa” is nothing but, nothing less than, a damned good ninth studio album. My final rating: 10/10.
(Massimiliano “John Rotter” Morelli)