PRIVATE VENUE, LONDON Since live music’s comeback, Cradle Of Filth really have tried to make every show a must-see. They toured America last year, playing Cruelty And The Beast in full every night, before returning home for a Halloween gig jammed with rarities and new material. Now Dani Filth’s bleak circus aren’t only honouring the vernal equinox with a livestream, they’re wishing second album Dusk… And Her Embrace a belated 25th birthday. Dani’s dressed to match, trading corpsepaint for his classic raven eyeliner, but not everything’s as thought through. The stage is an empty warehouse with a tree trunk in the middle. It looks a bit shit. And Dusk… hasn’t aged remarkably. The quirks that define Cradle today – backand-forth screeches and croons, soaring guitar leads, extreme earworms – were still in utero in 1996. As a result, the greatest hits encore more clearly flaunts the sextet’s strengths. Clean singer Anabelle Iratni drives Right Wing Of The Garden Triptych between its plethora of solos, before Necromantic Fantasies claws at the brain with its grunted hook. Plenty yearn for the resurrection of the Cradle of yore, but tonight’s juxtaposition of ‘then and now’ proves the band are currently penning better songs than ever before.
MATT MILLS