A non appena un anno di distanza dal fortunato "Cruelty and the Beast" , disco che porta i Cradle of Filth al meritato successo, la band del Sig. Dani Filth si prepara oltre che a godere delle glorie avute (tra queste quella di essere popolari più dei colleghi Dimmu Borgir), a focalizzare l'attenzione su quale direzione far confluire i propri lavori futuri . In attesa di quello che poi spunterà in Midian, i COF sfornano un E.P. (datato 1999) di transizione tra il vecchio ed il nuovo, ed il risultato è "From the Cradle to Enslave", con un titolo confezionato quasi a simboleggiare che l'aura oscura della band renda schiavi fin dalle origini.
Si parte con la omonima traccia che dà il nome all'album: l'impatto non devia molto con quello che di solito siamo stati abituati a sentire, e cioè quel mix di black, trash alla tedesca e un pò di gothic onirico. La Presenza dei cori femminili ed in particolare della fedele vocalist Sarah Jezebel Deva impreziosiscono di pathos questo pezzo, che alterna parti lente a parti veloci e aggressive sapientemente suonate dall'ex At The Gates Adrian Erlandsonn, membro dei COF stabile dopo l'abbandono del rimpianto Nicholas Barker. La seconda traccia "Of dark blood and F**king" conferma quanto detto sopra, solo un pò più violenta e "blackie". Ma le vere sorprese devono ancora arrivare con "Death comes ripping ", una cover dal sapore hardcore dei Danzig, ma che i COF rendono sua, e la preziosissima "Sleepless" altra cover degli Anathema, dove il giro di basso di Robin Graves coadiuvato dalle tastiere di Lector Smith cullano la strofa fino ad un esplosione del ritornello, dove le chitarre di Gyan e Stuart stridono assieme alla voce tagliente di Dani Filth. Restano ancora una song sperimentale come "Perverts church ( from the cradle to deprave)" figlia di un processo "elettronicamente" perverso ad opera sembra di Nick Barker (non pochi hanno storto il naso per questo esperimento techno/dance), ed una riproduzione live di discreta qualità di "Funeral in Carpathia".
Il disco termina qui e le domanda che ci si pone di più è (era): quale sarà la direzione da prendere per i COF dopo questa parentesi seppur breve? Il tempo darà la risposta in quell'anno 2000, quando uscirà Midian e tutti potranno accorgersi dei progressi fatti dai vampiri inglesi. Infine si consiglia questo carino E.P. ai fans della band, ma anche ai non fans, a patto che giudichino i COF dagli altri lavori e non da questo.
Elenco tracce e testi
01 From the Cradle to Enslave (06:36)
Two thousand fattened years like maniacs
Have despoiled our common grave
Now what necrophagous Second Coming backs
From the cradle to enslave?
Sickle constellations
Stud the belts that welt the sky
Whilst the Bitter winter moon
Prowls the clouds, dead-eyed
Like shifting parent flesh
Under silk matricide...
Watchful as she was upon Eden
Where every rose arbour and orchard she swept
hid the hissing of a serpent Libido
In an ancient tryst with catastrophe
Soon to be kept
Hear that hissing now on the breeze
As through the plundered groves of the carnal garden
A fresh horror blows
But ten billion souls
Are blind to see the rotting wood for the trees
This is the theme to a bitter Armageddon
Nightchords rake the heavens
Pandaemonaeon
And what use are prayers to that �god�?
As devils bay concenus for the space to piss
On your smouldering faith
And the the mouldering face
Of this world long a paradise lost
This is the end of everything
Hear the growing chora that a new dawn shall bring
Dance macabre �neath the tilt of the zodiac
Now brighter stars shall reflect on our fate
What sick activities will be freed when those lights burn black?
The darkside of the mirror always threw our malice back...
I see the serpentine in your eyes
The nature of the beast as revelations arrive
Our screams shall trail to Angels
For those damned in flames repay
All sinners lose their lot on Judgement Day
We should have cut our losses as at Calvary
But our hearts like heavy crosses held the vain belief
Salvation, like a promised nation
Gleamed a claim away...
This is the end of everything you have ever known
Buried like vanquished reason
Death in season
Driven like the drifting snow
Peace, a fragile lover, left us fantasising war
On our knees or another fucker�s shore
Heiling new flesh
Read, then roared
To a crooked cross and a Holy Cause
What else be whipped to frenzy for?
This is the end of everything
Rear the tragedies
That the Seraphim shall sing
Old adversaries
Next of Eve
Now they're clawing back
I smell their cumming
As through webbed panes of meat
Led by hoary Death
They never left
Dreaming sodomies
To impress on human failure
When we've bled upon our knees
Tablatures of gravel law
Shall see Gehennah paved
When empires fall
And nightmares crawl
From the cradle to enslave...
This is the end of everything
02 Of Dark Blood and Fucking (06:02)
Sister midnight comes blaspheming
Screaming in the keys of faith and fear
Unentwining our spines twists me to kneeling...
Spilling like the moonlight on her glistening rear
Defiled at heart
In this perfect hell
Under red leaves bleeding
Over scaled chateau we fell
To demonocracy
Where neither Adam or Eve
Conceived of such iniquities
From pleasure or pain
Or the razor's edge inbetween
Thou art my seventh heaven burning
Going down as with the sun...
Within like a river fluids moves a torrent
Bound to please
On denierred knees
In any wicked way
That her whims may warrant
I hang on every verb
Every dirty word
Interred
In her pornoglossa...
Christlike, whipped and weak
Painted nails driven through the meek
Yet in obituary
My dreams still weep
Of dark blood and f**king thee
Thou art seventh heaven burning
Going down as with the day
Baring lunar curvature
Like canvas for a lick of pain
Writhing like a viper
Deep inside her Eden
Forbidden to eat
I kiss leylines to her feet
Then baiting wrath
I steal a path
Back to the fruits of her womb
Back to the crack of her tomb...
Her roseate sliver
Quivers with snuff appeal
The torque of her hips
Lip-sync me in for the kill
Tongue-tied, tightrope and spread like disease
I drain the cup of this Miss Sire
Her water into wine for me
Thou art my seventh angel squirming
'Neath the forked tongue of the beast
Arching toward the fabled
Like a sculptured nymph seeking base relief...
Whilst the world outside
(A wood of suicide)
Would die for this release
Our slow orgasmic fuses greet...
By night and by candle
At each other's throat
In a slick drift of red
Setting god's teeth on edge
We were as wolves preying inside the fold
Of a slaughtered lamb throw
On a four poster bed...
Succulent, Succubus
Laid without rest
In the dead of the night
Succulent, Succubus
In thy arms
And thy wetness
On glossed lips I taste
Conspiracies, secrecies, sorceries laced
With thick unguent rum
Black-rayed suns and Autumn
Always in season for our nightfall from grace
Gorge upon my seed
Starved Persephone
Succulent, Succubus
Succour me.
That I might keep
Thee with me in Hades
Succulent, Succubus
Succour me
04 Sleepless (04:19)
And I often sigh
I often wonder why
I'm still here
And still I cry
And I often cry
I often spill a tear
Over those not here
But still they are so dear
Please ease my burden
And I still remember
The memory and I weep
In my broken soul
The scars they cut so deep
Please ease my burdenx2
Surely without war
There should be no loss
Theres no mourning or fear, no pain, no misery
No sleepless nights missing the dead, oh no more
No more war
There must be no war
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