MUSIC: St. Valentine’s Day with Satan: The Cradle rocks at the House of Blues
Valentine’s Day with a bunch of leather-coated English dudes who pen tunes about being pooped out of hell -- ladies, gets ya weak in the knees just thinkin’ about it, huh?
Romance was in the air at the House of Blues on Saturday night, when U.K. black metal beasties Cradle of Filth set love letters to Satan via warp-speed, symphonic blasts of finger snappin’ blasphemy.
No, this bunch isn’t big on subtlety. The very titles to some of their most potent anti-religious screeds are too profane to even print and the band took to the House of Blues stage backed by a giant crucifix toppled over on its side.
Compact Cradle of Filth frontman Dani Filth may be small in stature, but his voice sounds like something that would originate from the chest cavity of a disgruntled Orc. He alternates this horrific, spine-tingling shriek with a guttural death gargle, giving this band plenty of highs and lows to work with.
Unlike some of their more primal peers, Cradle of Filth have always embraced ostentation and a gothic excess in their tunes, with layers of keys and orchestration adding a sweeping, dramatic feel to their otherwise cold and clammy catalog.
At the House of Blues, the band alternated newer cuts like “Honey and Sulfur” and “Nymphetamine” with old school favorites like “Dusk and Her Embrace” and “The Principle of Evil Made Flesh.”
Live, the band’s majestic-minded malevolence takes on a more visceral edge, with hair and elbows flying as the band substitutes grit for grandeur.
Like Cradle of Filth, support act Satyricon, from Norway, has made a name for themselves by tweaking the turgid black metal blueprint, incorporating liberal doses of a straight-up rock and roll groove into their frosty dirges.
At the House of Blues, the band stuck mostly to its last three albums, where they moved further and further away from the stentorian, blast-beat driven epics that colored the early part of the band’s career in favor of something much more streamlined and distinct.
With frontman Satyr gripping a large, evil looking mic stand, the band knifed into the closet thing that black metal has to radio hits, songs like “K.I.N.G.” and current single “Black Crow on a Tombstone,” a great, dusky grinder driven by head bobbin’ riffs and a high-powered chorus.
By request from the crowd, though, the band did end its set with an oldie but goodie, the scalding “Mother North,” a brusque summation of the black metal genre’s trademarks by a band that no longer has all that much use for them.
