I never have seen Cradle of Filth live before. I like their first couple of albums, up until Cruelty and the Beast, but never got to see them live. And after that I kind of lost track of them. So when I saw this gig announced I thought to check them out, seeing that they would still play a couple of songs that I actually know. The venue wasn’t sold out by far – I expected them to be more popular.

I skipped the first support, Black Satellite and entered the venue just before the second band was starting. That was the German Mental Cruelty. I hadn’t heard of them before. According to Metal Archives they play deathcore. A I guess that is what they play indeed. There is a lot of things I don’t like about it, notably the vocals and the breakdowns. Though they do have some really cool lead guitar work and some good riffs too. Not really my thing but not too bad either.

The second band was Butcher Babies. Essentially I had no idea what that was beforehand. Musically it is a mix of styles including groove metal and some *core stuff as well as some pop. It sounded terrible. In the second or so song some guys in pink women’s clothes appeared an stage with confetti. The pop song near the end of the set. It was terrible.

Then it was time for Cradle of Filth. This was the last gig of the 6 week long tour. So I wondered how Dani’s vocals would hold up. They opened up with a couple of newer songs I didn’t know. Yet the sounded quite very similar in style to the material I did know although I guess a bit more of the symphonic stuff. There are some cool riffs and melodies in nearly every song. One of their guitarist aspired to be pinhead with the drawing on his face, albeit without the pins. He even brought a puzzle box. Anyway the band played really well. I couldn’t really see the drummer much as he was largely hidden by a plexiglas shield and a metal fence. I guess the shield is for the keyboard player who he shared the raiser with. But Dani’s vocals – well his low vocals are okay, but those high pitched squeals sound terrible, half the time they didn’t come out right. And it is just one pitch. So all in all it didn’t let me down. I can’t say it was a great gig but it was good. If they ever play a set with more stuff from the early albums I might check them out again.