GRAMMY Award-nominated extreme metal institution Cradle Of Filth is thrilled to unveil their upcoming 14th studio album, The “Screaming Of The Valkyries”, out March 21st, 2025 via Napalm Records. Available for pre-order now, the album excels as a succinct summation of the ghosts of Cradle’s past, while taking bold new steps into the future.
Cradle Of Filth reigns supreme as one of the most revered, formative and notorious names in music – from the depths of the extreme metal underground to the peaks of mainstream pop culture itself, and are responsible for breaking ground for many of today’s top metal artists with their trademark mixture of blackened heaviness, macabre theatricality and scintillating gothic style. Now, following the release of 2021’s “Existence Is Futile” (#20 Billboard 200 with Hard Rock Genre), iconic frontman Dani Filth & Co. emerge again with a legacy-cementing opus.
Entrance yourself with a brand new Cradle Of Filth anthem for a new era – “To Live Deliciously” – out today. The track hits with rhythmic, menacing urgency built around a Libertine lyrical hook that twists and writhes with aggression, atmosphere and melody.
Cradle Of Filth master of ceremonies Dani Filth says about the new track:
“The song is about the celebration of life. Of indulging in everything unfettered from the conformities of religion, fashion or state. Free from guilt or constraint. As nature intended.
It could be read as a hedonistic life code. And a positive one if not done at the expense or the suffering of others.
To delight in simply’ being’. Being alive and free in the here and now.”
On “The Screaming Of The Valkyries”, frontman Dani Filth’s recognizable scream and equally identifiable growl stand mightily alongside twin guitar attacks, symphonic flourishes and explosive rhythm section, implemented by drummer Martin “Marthus” Skaroupka, bassist Daniel Firth, guitarists Marek “Ashok” Smerda and Donny Burbage, and keyboardist/vocalist Zoe Federoff.
After album opener “To Live Deliciously” hits immediately, second track “Demagoguery” blends dark beauty, blast beats and slaytanic groove as only Cradle can combine. Across the album’s blunt and unforgiving yet inviting expanse, Cradle summons the succulent flavors of classic albums like “Dusk And Her Embrace” and “Cruelty And The Beast” with the galloping (but no less fierce) thunder of recent entries “Hammer Of The Witches” and “Existence Is Futile”. Flashes of early metal influences coalesce with carnivorous glee into unapologetic death ‘n’ roll. “White Hellebore” is Cradle Of Filth at its most devilishly straightforward, juxtaposing traditional heavy metal with blasts of thrashing fury, spinning back to operatic goth without sounding disjointed. Anchored by arguably the most mournful melody in their catalog, “Non Omnis Moriar” (“I shall not wholly die”) could be a cousin to Paradise Lost or Anathema, inverted through Cradle’s thorny prism. “You Are My Nautilus” is the darkest song Iron Maiden never wrote, spinning an epic tale with dueling guitars, while “Ex Sanguine Draculae” conjures Dusk-era atmosphere with imaginative new colors.
Produced, recorded, mixed and mastered by Scott Atkins at Grindstone Studios in Suffolk, England, The Screaming of the Valkyries beckons the brave into a new era of Cradle Of Filth misadventure, celebrating massive melancholic melody, blackened thrash, and apocalyptic existential dread with a grinning smattering of unbridled revelry. “The Screaming of the Valkyries” is a bloody dark love letter to the longtime legion of Cradle Of Filth faithful and a stunning entryway for fresh lambs to the sonic slaughter.
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1. To Live Deliciously 2. Demagoguery 3. The Trinity Of Shadows 4. Non Omnis Moriar 5. White Hellebore 6. You Are My Nautilus 7. Malignant Perfection 8. Ex Sanguine Draculae 9. When Misery Was A Stranger |
[photo credit: Jakub Alexandrowicz]
