Earlier the album was erroneously referred to as All Hallows Eve, probably because the announced release date was close to Hallowe'en. It was released on Novemthrough Peaceville Records. Even more significantly, the wealth of references in the band’s songs demonstrate beyond question that Aphrodite/ Venus does indeed remain the goddess of modern love and passion.Late 2009 - early 2010 at Monkey Puzzle House Studio, Woolpit, Suffolk, Englandĭarkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa is the ninth studio album by English extreme metal band Cradle of Filth. Cradle Of Filth - Darkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa Limited Edition. Sometimes, of course, Cradle of Filth‘s songs can be a little overwrought, and even portentous, with archaic ‘poetic’ diction, but the lyrics illustrate the abiding power of the supernatural in our imaginations. Enviar por correo electrnico Escribe un blog Compartir con Twitter.
Much of her destructive as well as lustful and sensual potential is summarised in 2010’s Cult of Venus Adversa.ĭraping nakedness about their pagan saviours The goddess can be mighty and terrifying, as well as being an epitome of independent female sexuality. There are mentions, variously, of Diana and Pandora, of Artemis and Bastet, of Ashtoreth, Ishtar and Astarte ( Persecution Song Principle of Evil Made Flesh and Lustmord and Wargasm (The Relicking of Cadaverous Wounds)). Still, she remains a goddess of the ocean: “Storm forth indignant Kraken/ Reborn Venus as thou art… I call thee having wrestled/ The tides from lonely Diana” ( Beauty Slept in Sodom).Īs observed at the start, the goddess in all her forms is celebrated in Cradle of Filth’s lyrics. In Mistress of the Sucking Pit, from Venus Aversa, sexual passion is even more powerfully evoked after a lover is discovered. In Rise of the Pentagram this association is even more explicit: two lovers are found in a”house of incest when we undressed/ Blasphemies against Venus were rent.” The pair proceed to ““haunt fairy groves/ And hot virgin coves/ Wherein the promiscuous swam.”
She can be a deity of strange sexualities: “Adverse Venus of the rites/ Hearse of perverse appetites” ( Vengeful Spirit). More frequently, Venus is the subject of the songs. A similar reference is found in Lovesick for Mina, in which the narrator “wishes to be always near her/ Forever or whenever seas recall/ This Aphrodite from my embrace.” The wine of Bacchus flows and the pair of lovers “wreak erotic maladies where sex and death abide.” There is broad learning behind these songs- consider for example Bathory Aria’s reference to “storm-beached Aphrodite/ Drowned on Kytherean tides.” This is a more dramatic imagining of the Greek myth of Venus, born from the waves on the shore of Kythera. The singer is “enamoured and imparadised Nymph-lascivious Aphrodite,” a fantastic lyric that encompasses so much classical mythology in just a few words.
In Nocturnal Supremacy she appears as the full embodiment of the goddess of love (and lust). That their 2010 album was titled Darkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa and featured a title track, The Cult of Venus Aversa confirms this fascination.Īnother nice illustration of this is the cover for Cryptoriana (2017) which directly quotes the imagery of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus (see below) mixed with gothic Victoriana.Īphrodite is mentioned on several of the band’s tracks. My interest in them here is the fact that their lyrics are notably well informed by world mythology and religious legend, and the ‘goddess’ in the broadest sense (see, for example, Lilith Immaculate, “the dark moon goddess”)- and Aphrodite more specifically- feature repeatedly in their songs. Their style has evolved from black metal to a cleaner amalgam of gothic metal, symphonic metal and other metal genres. As Wikipedia succinctly describes, Cradle of Filth are an extreme metal band, formed in Hadleigh, Suffolk, in 1991.