Today I spent a little time with Belphegor and Cradle of Filth. Despite the title of this post, I don’t really consider them in competition with each other. They’re really in different leagues, and interleague play hasn’t started yet. I know they’re in different leagues because the uniforms are different. Belphegor are in the helmeted-and-gas-masked division and, as you can see below, Cradle of Filth are in the eyeliner-and-funny-hats division:
Cradle of Filth have a new album — The Manticore and Other Horrors — that will be released on October 29 (EU) via Peaceville Records and October 30 (NA) via Nuclear Blast USA. Today I listened to one of the tracks from the album. Belphegor have a new album due for release in March 2013, and today I watched a video of drum and bass tracks being laid down at Erik Rutan’s Mana Studios in Florida.
I confess that it’s been a while since I took Cradle of Filth seriously. Somewhere along the way I decided they really weren’t my thing and I stopped paying attention. I can’t remember exactly when that happened. But nevertheless I decided to give this new song a shot, and it pleasantly surprised me. Its title is “For Your Vulgar Delectation”. It’s catchy and dynamic and it got my head moving, and it’s not campy or loaded with cheese. It didn’t terrorize me like most of Belphegor’s music, but I’m enjoying it anyway.
The Belphegor studio clip doesn’t reveal as much of the new music as I would like, but the drum and bass tracking do tend to bear out the band’s recent statements that the music is going to be fast and hyper-aggressive, and it goes without saying that it will be infernal. It will also be the band’s first recordings since Helmuth was laid low by a typhus infection in Brazil that put him in intensive care and required open heart surgery and months of rehab.
So, I’m not saying that it’s necessary for anyone to choose up sides in non-existent competition, but who’s more psyched for Cradle of Filth and who’s more psyched for Belphegor? Please entertain me with your comments.
22 Responses to “BELPHEGOR vs. CRADLE OF FILTH”
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I won’t deny that I like Cradle of Filth as I love cheese, but I’ll go with Belphegor on this one, looking forward to hear the infernal sounds of this band while I kill some goats and drink their blood. The new song of Cradle is alright, let’s just hope their new record is more in the same line.
“Somewhere along the way I decided they really weren’t my thing and I stopped paying attention. I can’t remember exactly when that happened.”
If youre anything like me…Probably 30 seconds into you first experience with them.
I have like, 6 Cradle songs across their whole discography that I enjoy. Makes for a pretty good EP.
Well to be fair…I know a couple of guys who swear that, back in their demo days, their death metal stuff was pretty solid.
Havent heard it myself though
The semi-clean/mostly-distorted vocals in the CoF song are awful. Awful awful awful. It sounds like he’s started to lose his voice and is trying to cover it up. Aside from that this is the best CoF song I’ve heard since that one EP with the tits on it. Something about blood or sunset or look I don’t know I was in high school it was a long time ago man.
Well, I’ve forgotten the last time I listened to any CoF, but this song sounded like an improvement over my vague memories of previous music.
The only bit that caught my attention on the COF track was the guitar part a little after the 2 minute mark. The rest of it was pretty unremarkable.
Super psyched for the new Belphegor album, although I hope “Chapter X” is just a working title. Based on the second clip of Serpenth laying down his bass parts, I think we can at least look forward to a mid-paced jam in the vein of “Der Geistertreiber.” And I thought the guitar in the background of his first part sounded a bit like the intro to “In Blood-Devour This Sanctity,” which is promising.
The early COF use to make the hackles on the back of my neck stand up, it was good ‘scary’ agro music that was quality made.I recall seeing COF on the ‘dusk’ tour, and I was pumped for the show but was remarkably underwhelmed by their live stuff, particularly Dani’s vocals which for all intensive purposes were a trademark for COF (kinda like if you ever dug Megadeth, then heard Dave sing live and thought, ‘fuk, is that a cat being strangled or is that Mustaine?)… I’ve tried to keep up with COF stuff they have released over the last.. 10 years or so, but most of it is kinda of ‘meh’ in terms of excitement level. Put Nick Barker back in the band, then it would instantly go back up a few notches.. Belphegor + Erik Rutan, yes please!!
Yeah, I think if Erik Rutan calls something badass, it’s going to be badass, because he knows badass intimately. 🙂 That’s a marriage made in Hades.
Never got into Belphegor, been a fan of CoF since Dusk… And Her Embrace and haven’t been turned off by what they’d done since then, even when they had turned up the suck a bit.
Cruelty And The Beast may be their best album, but they have put out some good stuff since then and become more than what they started out as. True, Nymphetamine and Thornography didn’t have the band at their best, but Godspeed On The Devil’s Thunder was a nice return to form. I didn’t expect their last album to be able to match it and from what I heard from it, it didn’t. Now, it’s hard to tell from one song, so I’ll wait until I hear more before I decide whether to get this album (I skipped the last one too).
I have Belphegor’s… I think it’s “Pestocalypse” album. I generally like it, but I think it sounds a good bit like Behemoth, and I like Behemoth a lot more. I also enjoy Cradle of Filth but I haven’t really listened to much of their music.
If you’d like to broaden your Belphegor horizons, I would give “Walpurgis Rites-Hexenwahn” a shot. It’s got some of their catchiest stuff on it.
Cradle Of Filth’s record will kick belphegors ass lol
I discovered CoF and Dimmu Borgir at the same time, and while I’m not a HUGE fan of Dimmu Borgir it was my opinion at the time that CoF was a poor second at best. They have yet to do anything since that has changed my opinion. Also from interviews and stuff I’ve seen it sounds like Dani Filth is a huge douchecannon but whatever. So yeah, needless to say, I gotta give it to Belphegor on this one.
I saw them on one of those sponsored tours with like four other bands, and all the other bands got like 30 minutes and CoF got about an hour and a half. I went to the merch table just in time to overhear the singer from Himsa bitching about the unfair set times and how much of a douche Dani Filth is.
It made me smile.
You saw Himsa? I fuckin loved Himsa. I wonder if it would be possible to resurrect Himsa by making a blood sacrifice of CoF. Hey, couldn’t hurt to find it, could it?
I even got one of their CDs, but I have no idea what happened to it. It was so long ago that I now have no idea if I enjoyed their set or not. I think I probably did, because why else would I have gotten their CD.
To the YouTubes!
In a head to head match between Belphegor and CoF, CoF loses to sheer brutality. It’s like a singular goat trying to take on a swarm of velociraptors with hunger boners.
On its own CoF, isn’t quite as shitty as its reputation would lead you to believe. I have Damnation and a Day and Nympetamine from back when I was first getting into metal. (Holy shit, that was eight years ago???) And I’ve seen them live once. I would say that they appeal directly to the Hot Topic douchebag inside of me that just won’t die no matter how much I wrap a plastic bag around his head and then stab him with steak knives.
Now that I think about it, that’s a pretty horrible thing to appeal to. Yeah, they are exactly as shitty as their reputation would lead you to believe. Still, I think I might still like Damnation and a Day. But I’m scared to find out.
Neither/
Belphegor are fucking crushing.
So I think we know which side my bread is buttered here.
Haven’t listened to Belphegor… I’ve always sort of dug CoF as an entertaining band that doesn’t take itself all that seriously, but they’re officially in AC/DC territory as a band that churns out completely expected material.
Can anyone recommend some COF songs that are in the vein of Nymphetamine Fix? Also, Belphagor rapes COF in terms of ability, brutality, and overall awesomeness.