CRADLE OF FILTH — Bitter Suites to Succubi (review)

CRADLE OF FILTH — Bitter Suites to Succubi album cover

EP · 2001 · Gothic Metal

3/5 · 2021-10-02
lukretion

Bitter Suites to Succubi continues Cradle of Filth’s tradition of releasing material in between their main full-lengths via smaller-sized EPs. This EP was released in 2001, one year after their highly successful full-length album Midian. Recorded with the same line-up of Midian, the EP actually contains a healthy amount of material, clocking in at nearly 50 minutes overall. Some of the tracks are new songs (2 instrumentals and 4 songs with vocals), while the rest are re-recordings of material from the band’s debut The Principle of Evil Made Flesh (3 songs), and a The Sisters of Mercy’s cover (“No Time to Cry”).

Most of the new material follows the same style of Midian. The music is fast and aggressive, revolving around thrashy guitar riffs and heavy drumming, but it also sports rich and elaborated keyboard arrangements. Dani’s vocals rely more on snarls and mid-range growls than on those high-pitched shrieks that featured heavily in earlier albums. Perhaps unusually, most of the new songs are fairly compact and do not overindulge in too many tempo changes or complex, multi-part compositions, but go straight to the point. I believe this is actually their saving grace, because in most cases these songs are not exceptional, but the fact that they are short and to the point helps making them impactful and pleasant to listen to.

There is one exception, which is the nearly 7 minutes of “Suicide and Other Comforts”. This is actually a great song, which compares favourably to some of the best tracks from Dusk … and Her Embrace, Cruelty and the Beast, and Midian. It has all the hallmarks of the great Cradle of Filth’s material. It is a complex, multi-part beast that is cleverly anchored around an epic riff that repeats throughout the song. The gothic undertones are as present as ever (much more so than on many Midian tracks), and so are the majestic mid-tempo sections. The song also features a surprising electronic twist in the coda, which I find really well placed and exciting. Overall, this song alone is worth the purchase of the EP.

The re-recordings of The Principle of Evil Made Flesh tracks give the music a stronger symphonic identity compared to the original. The experiment is only partially successful. The three songs included on the EP are among the best material from the debut (the title track, “Summer Dying Fast” and “The Black Goddess Rises”), but the re-vamped keyboard arrangements feel somewhat forced. Moreover, I am not sure they actually help elevate the material to the standards of later Cradle of Filth output. The problem I have with the early material is that it often feels chaotic from a compositional point of view (the different parts of a song do not flow well together), which is something that the new versions inevitably also suffer from. Having said that, tracks like “Summer Dying Fast” and “The Black Goddess Rises” are high-quality pieces of music and therefore re-listening to them in this new guise is nevertheless a pleasure.

The other track included on the EP is a cover of English goth rock band The Sisters of Mercy, “No Time to Cry”. Cradle of Filth have a long tradition of releasing excellent covers (think of “Hallowed Be Thy Name” by Iron Maiden or Anathema’s “Sleepless”), but this isn’t one of them. It’s a little gothy piece that Cradle of Filth coloured with more sinister undertones, but it does not do much for me. In fact, this song stands out a bit like a sore thumb in the context of the (vastly more extreme) material of the EP.

In summary, Bitter Suites to Succubi is a decent album, with at least one grandiose song and a handful of other good ones. Its main weakness is that it is perhaps too heterogeneous, collecting together new material with a strong Midian flavour, songs that have a much more gothic allure (harking back to the Dusk … and Her Embrace era) and re-vamped versions of the debut LP material. But it has its moments and it ensures nearly an hour of fun extreme music, which sometimes it’s all one really needs.