dB HoF NO. 78

The Principle of Evil Made Flesh

Label: Cacophonous

Release date: 1994

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Formed in 1991 in Ipswich, about 82 miles northeast of London, Cradle of Filth started out as, to quote frontman Dani Filth, a “gore-flecked death metal” band. The group’s 1992 demo, Orgiastic Pleasures Foul, didn’t exactly set Ipswich (or England) alight. But over the course of the same year, core Filthies Dani, guitarist Paul Allender and keyboardist Benjamin Ryan would release three more demos—The Black Goddess Rises, Invoking the Unclean and Total Fucking Darkness—slowly increasing the group’s profile through tape-trading, flyering and sharing side A of a split cassette with fellow British death metallers Malediction. For all darkly erotic intents and violently sick purposes, Cradle of Filth were pushing hard and maturing fast.

Fast-forward a year. A darkness has befallen Scandinavia, specifically Norway and Sweden. As black metal emerges from geographical obscurity, it’s not the music that rubbernecks the underground, the mainstream media and every literate person in between; it’s the controversies. Churches have been burned (nine in 1992 and one in 1993) to the ground, rivalries between different black metal factions made public, and people—chiefly figurehead Øystein Aarseth of Mayhem and Deathlike Silence Productions—killed. Regardless, Cradle of Filth and about 10,000 other teenage Satanically-inclined dudes the world over were about to embark on a new—presumably left hand—path. Total Fucking Darkness, a third demo ushered out in 1992, saw a demonstrably more evil side of the Brits. While it ignited post office-prone tape traders, Cradle of Filth didn’t reach critical (black) mass until debut full-length, The Principle of Evil Made Flesh.

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