CRADLE OF FILTH
Biography and discography of Cradle of Filth, the extreme metal band formed in Suffolk, England in 1991, with a page for each of their fourteen studio albums from The Principle of Evil Made Flesh in 1994 to The Screaming of the Valkyries in 2025, including running orders, CD details, liner notes and a record of their concerts in Japan.
Biography
CRADLE OF FILTH
Biography
Cradle of Filth are an extreme metal band formed in Suffolk, in the east of England, in 1991. They are known for setting the vocabulary of gothic horror and a grand orchestration over black metal's speed, and they have made fourteen studio albums, from The Principle of Evil Made Flesh in 1994 to The Screaming of the Valkyries in 2025. At the centre of it is Dani Filth, the only member left from the beginning, and the title track of 2004's Nymphetamine brought the band a nomination at the 48th Grammy Awards.
Formation and the debut (1991-1994)
The band began in Suffolk in 1991. Three demos followed between 1991 and 1993, and the first album, The Principle of Evil Made Flesh, came out on Cacophonous Records on 24 February 1994. It had been recorded between September and November 1993 at Academy Music Studio in Dewsbury.
The sound at that point is far rawer than anything later, and Dani Filth's singing is not yet the style he would settle into. What is there from the start is the idea that made the band: welding gothic metal to black metal, which almost nobody was doing in 1994. It is the only album with the guitarist Paul Ryan and the keyboard player Benjamin Ryan, and the guitarist Paul Allender left at this point too.
Dusk... and Her Embrace, and the breakthrough (1995-1998)
Nicholas Barker joined on drums in 1995, and Sarah Jezebel Deva came in as the female voice in 1996. The EP V Empire or Dark Faerytales in Phallustein was the last record for Cacophonous — the contract ended in a dispute over money — and the band moved to Music for Nations.
The second album, Dusk... and Her Embrace, followed on 18 November 1996. It grafts the vocabulary of Victorian gothic fiction and the vampire story onto black metal's speed and a keyboard grandeur, and many take it as the record on which the band's style arrived whole. Cronos of Venom appears on "Haunted Shores". The band's first visit to Japan came on the tour for it.
Cruelty and the Beast, the third album, followed on 5 May 1998: a concept record about Elizabeth Báthory, the Hungarian "blood countess", with the actress Ingrid Pitt narrating in character as Báthory — a part she had first played in the Hammer Horror film Countess Dracula in 1971. The album was well received, but its production was held against it by fans, critics and the band alike, and a remixed and remastered edition, Cruelty and the Beast - Re-Mistressed, appeared in November 2019. Pony Canyon issued the Japanese edition on 20 May 1998 as PCCY-01244.
Midian, and a major label (1999-2003)
The fourth album, Midian, came out on 30 October 2000, drawn from Clive Barker's novel Cabal. Paul Allender returned on guitar, and Adrian Erlandsson of At the Gates and The Haunted joined on drums with Martin Powell of My Dying Bride and Anathema on keyboards. Doug Bradley, Pinhead in the Hellraiser films, narrates several songs; he would appear on six Cradle of Filth releases in all. Victor Entertainment issued the Japanese edition on 22 November 2000 as VICP-61185, adding a cover of Sabbat's "For Those Who Died".
The band visited Japan for the second time in 2001. The Japanese edition of Bitter Suites to Succubi, built around re-recordings of early songs, came out on Victor on 4 July of the same year.
The fifth album, Damnation and a Day, followed on 10 March 2003, through Sony in Europe and Epic in the United States. It is the only Cradle of Filth album made for a major label. It takes John Milton's Paradise Lost as its ground and is laid out in four movements, with the hundred-and-one-piece Budapest Film Orchestra — including a forty-piece choir — playing across the whole of it. Nothing else in the catalogue is scored on that scale.
The Roadrunner years (2004-2009)
The band left the major and signed to Roadrunner Records, releasing the sixth album, Nymphetamine, on 28 September 2004. Liv Kristine of Theatre of Tragedy sings on the title track, "Nymphetamine Fix", which was nominated for Best Metal Performance at the 48th Grammy Awards — the band's only Grammy nomination. The guitarist James McIlroy joined, and it is the last album with the keyboard player Martin Powell.
The seventh album, Thornography, followed on 17 October 2006, produced by Rob Caggiano, formerly of Anthrax, and mixed by Andy Sneap. Ville Valo of HIM sings on "The Byronic Man", and Dirty Harry appears on the closing cover of Heaven 17's "Temptation". Roadrunner Japan put the Japanese edition out six days early, on 11 October, as RRCY-21265, with a cover of Samhain's "Halloween II" added.
The eighth, Godspeed on the Devil's Thunder, came out on 28 October 2008, subtitled The Life and Crimes of Gilles de Rais and following the French baron who fought beside Joan of Arc and was later executed for mass murder. Andy Sneap shared the production.
Peaceville, and a three-piece (2010-2014)
The ninth album, Darkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa, was the first for Peaceville, released on 1 November 2010. Its subject is Lilith, in Jewish tradition Adam's first wife, who left him rather than submit. It is the only Cradle of Filth album with the keyboard player Ashley Ellyllon, and the last with the bassist Dave Pybus and the guitarist James McIlroy.
The tenth, The Manticore and Other Horrors, followed on 29 October 2012, and is the only Cradle of Filth album made by the band as three people rather than the usual six. It is the last with the guitarist Paul Allender, who left for the second time in April 2014. The band's current bassist, Daniel Firth, joined during its recording.
Nuclear Blast, and a new line-up (2015-2021)
The eleventh album, Hammer of the Witches, came out on 10 July 2015, the first for Nuclear Blast and the first by the line-up assembled after Allender and McIlroy left: Marek "Ashok" Šmerda and Richard Shaw on guitars, Lindsay Schoolcraft on keyboards and female vocals. The title comes from the Malleus Maleficarum, the witch-hunters' manual Heinrich Kramer wrote in 1486.
The twelfth, Cryptoriana - The Seductiveness of Decay, followed on 22 September 2017, its subject the Victorian appetite for death and decay. Ward Records issued the Japanese edition as GQCS-90427. It was on this record that the band played Loud Park 17 and then, in May 2018, their first headline tour of Japan in seventeen years.
The thirteenth, Existence Is Futile, came out on 22 October 2021, recorded through 2020 while the world stood still. It is the only album with the keyboard player and female vocalist Anabelle Iratni, and the last with the guitarist Richard Shaw, who left in May 2022. Doug Bradley narrates two tracks, his first appearance with the band since Evermore Darkly in 2011.
Napalm and The Screaming of the Valkyries (2022-2026)
Donny Burbage joined on guitar in 2022, having played with the American band Æther Realm since 2014. On the fourteenth album, The Screaming of the Valkyries, released by Napalm Records on 21 March 2025, he contributed keyboards and orchestration as well as guitar. Ward Records issued the Japanese edition the same day as GQCS-91578. It is the last album with Marek "Ashok" Šmerda and the only one with the keyboard player and female vocalist Zoe Marie Federoff.
Music for Nations released a thirtieth-anniversary edition of Dusk... and Her Embrace on 30 October 2026, on splatter vinyl and as a deluxe CD in a numbered coffin-shaped box, the CD carrying "Hell Awaits" and "Carmilla's Masque" as bonus tracks. In September of the same year it was announced that Dani Filth's autobiography, The Filth: My Life In Devilry And Debauchery, written with Joel McIver, would be published by Little, Brown Book Group (Hachette UK) in June 2027.
About the members
The current line-up is Dani Filth on vocals, Martin "Marthus" Skaroupka on drums, keyboards and orchestration, Daniel Firth on bass and Donny Burbage on guitars. The member list on this site carries only the people the band's own official site names, and no other player has been filled in by inference.
Dani Filth is the only founding member still there, and his name is Daniel Lloyd Davey. Daniel Firth joined during the recording of The Manticore and Other Horrors and has been part of the writing since Hammer of the Witches.
Discography
There are fourteen studio albums: The Principle of Evil Made Flesh (1994), Dusk... and Her Embrace (1996), Cruelty and the Beast (1998), Midian (2000), Damnation and a Day (2003), Nymphetamine (2004), Thornography (2006), Godspeed on the Devil's Thunder (2008), Darkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa (2010), The Manticore and Other Horrors (2012), Hammer of the Witches (2015), Cryptoriana - The Seductiveness of Decay (2017), Existence Is Futile (2021) and The Screaming of the Valkyries (2025).
Beside them stand the mini-album V Empire or Dark Faerytales in Phallustein (1996), the re-recording collections Bitter Suites to Succubi (2001) and Midnight in the Labyrinth (2012), the EP Evermore Darkly (2011), the compilation Lovecraft & Witch Hearts (2002) and the live album Live Bait for the Dead (2002). The album list on this site covers the studio albums.
Concerts in Japan
The band has been to Japan four times. What the LIVE section of this site carries is the four concerts whose dates can be established from a source: Loud Park 17 in 2017 and the three headline shows of May 2018.
The first visit came on the tour for Dusk... and Her Embrace and the second in 2001. Japanese Wikipedia records both, and BARKS' report of the 2018 show notes that the previous headline appearance had been all the way back in 2001, but nothing opened for this page gives a day for either. A concert page here carries its date in its own URL and stays up permanently once published, so a show whose date cannot be sourced is not registered.
The third visit was Loud Park 17, on 15 October 2017 at Saitama Super Arena. The festival's own timetable puts the band on the ULTIMATE STAGE at 15:40 on the second day, between Devin Townsend Project and Sabaton, on a bill that also held Apocalyptica, Meshuggah, Black Star Riders, Loudness, Outrage, the Gene Simmons Band and the headliner, Michael Schenker Fest.
The fourth was the Cryptoriana World Tour 2018 in Japan, the band's first headline visit since 2001: Ebisu LIQUIDROOM in Tokyo on 1 May, Umeda CLUB QUATTRO in Osaka on the 2nd and Nagoya CLUB QUATTRO on the 3rd, each with doors at 18:00 and the band on at 19:00. Creativeman promoted the tour with Ward Records. BARKS' report of the Tokyo night, written by Mirai Kawashima of Sigh, describes the band walking on to "Ave Satani" from The Omen, opening with "Gilded Cunt" and closing ninety minutes later on "From the Cradle to Enslave". Those three nights remain the band's most recent concerts in Japan.
About the sources
The facts here come from the band's own official site (its band page and each member's page), from the promoter Creativeman's event page and news items, from the Loud Park 17 official site's timetable, from BARKS' live report and interview of 2018, both written by Mirai Kawashima, from Victor Entertainment's artist page, from MusicBrainz, from the English Wikipedia articles on the band and on the individual albums, and from Japanese Wikipedia. No player's name has been filled in by inference.
Trivia
The Japanese tour of May 2018 was the band's first headline visit in seventeen years. Creativeman, who promoted it, announced it by saying that Cradle of Filth, who had given a stunning performance at Loud Park 17, would already be back for headline shows — six months after the festival. BARKS' report of the Tokyo night records that when the writer looked up when the last headline show had been, the answer was 2001, seventeen years earlier, and adds that some of the younger people in the room may not have been born by then.
The band's Loud Park 17 set was on the second day, 15 October 2017. The festival's own timetable puts them on the ULTIMATE STAGE at 15:40, with Devin Townsend Project before them and Sabaton after, and Michael Schenker Fest closing the stage that night. The other stage, BIG ROCK, carried Meshuggah, Black Star Riders, Loudness, Outrage and the Gene Simmons Band. The timetable for the previous day, 14 October, does not carry the band at all.
The band's own site names four current members and gives each one's role at the top of their own page: Dani Filth on vocals, Martin "Marthus" Skaroupka on drums, keyboards and orchestration, Daniel Firth on bass and Donny Burbage on guitars. Firth writes on his page that he played guitar for about ten years before picking up the bass in his mid-twenties, that the first band he played bass in was a Misfits tribute, that he joined Cradle of Filth during the recording of The Manticore and Other Horrors, and that he has been part of the writing since Hammer of the Witches. Burbage writes that he has played guitar in Æther Realm since 2014, that he joined in 2022, and that he contributed keyboards and orchestration as well as guitar on The Screaming of the Valkyries. The member list on this site holds those four because those four are the ones the band names.
In 2026 Dusk... and Her Embrace turned thirty. Marking the occasion, the band's own site named "Heaven Torn Asunder", "Funeral in Carpathia", "A Gothic Romance" and the title track, and wrote that they remain cornerstones of the live set to this day. The anniversary edition came from Music for Nations on splatter vinyl and as a deluxe CD in a numbered coffin-shaped box, the CD carrying "Hell Awaits" and "Carmilla's Masque" as bonus tracks. The band's North American Majestic In Death tour that year also played selected songs from the album to mark the thirty years.
The Tokyo show of 1 May 2018 began with the band walking on while "Ave Satani", the theme from The Omen, played. BARKS' report says the first song was "Gilded Cunt" from Nymphetamine and the second "Beneath the Howling Stars" from Cruelty and the Beast, the same pair that had opened the Loud Park 17 set the year before. An hour had gone by before the interval and eight songs had been played in it, which works out at over seven minutes each. It was the twentieth year since Cruelty and the Beast, and "Bathory Aria", eleven minutes long and in three parts, was among them. The set closed on "From the Cradle to Enslave" and ran about ninety minutes.
In an interview with BARKS on the eve of the 2018 tour, Dani Filth named three favourite metal albums: Mercyful Fate's Don't Break the Oath, Emperor's In the Nightside Eclipse and Slayer's Reign in Blood. Of the first he said that King Diamond is a front man he loves as an icon, that the record was among the first metal albums he ever owned, and that he loved it so much he believed the singing was done by a real ghost — he listened to it at his bedroom window on stormy nights in the English countryside with the lights off. Of the third he said his mother bought it for him for Christmas in 1986, pre-ordered from America, and that she shouted at him to turn it down every time he played it; she is now, he added, thoroughly a fan of the band.
In the same interview Dani Filth talked about touring with Emperor in the early 1990s. He said he remembered the wind changing while Ihsahn was breathing fire, setting his face alight — not seriously, he said, but Ihsahn painted his corpse paint around the stinging patches afterwards. In Liverpool the two bands stayed at the house of Darren White of Anathema, where everyone got thoroughly drunk, played the piano, sang, threw food at each other and buried Faust, then Emperor's drummer, under a pile of teddy bears, playing tricks all night. Against that, he said, the Edinburgh show drew an audience of three, for two bands.
Mirai Kawashima of Sigh, who wrote the report of the 2018 Tokyo show, argues in it that England has a line of storytelling extreme metal running from Hell through Sabbat to Cradle of Filth. Hell formed in 1982 out of the new wave of British heavy metal and stopped after Dave Halliday, its guitarist and singer, died in 1987. It was Halliday who taught Andy Sneap to play guitar, and Sneap went on to play in the thrash band Sabbat. Kawashima's reading is that Dani Filth took up the vocal manner of Sabbat's singer, Martin Walkyier. He writes that when he saw the band in Japan in 2001 he was startled by how closely Filth sang like Walkyier, and that by 2018 the singer had reached something on quite another level. Sneap has also worked on Cradle of Filth's own records.
News
BLACKBRAID To Replace MOONSPELL On CRADLE OF FILTH’s Fall North American Tour
MOONSPELL withdrew because their visas could not be processed in time. The Majestic In Death II tour starts in San Diego on September 29, with WORM and BLACK SATELLITE also on the bill.
CRADLE OF FILTH Frontman DANI FILTH’s Autobiography, “The Filth: My Life In Devilry And Debauchery”, To Arrive In June 2027
Written with Joel McIver and published by Little, Brown Book Group (Hachette UK), the book runs from Filth’s Suffolk childhood through four decades of Cradle Of Filth and his work with Devilment and Temple Of The Black Moon.
CRADLE OF FILTH Celebrates 30th Anniversary Of ‘Dusk… And Her Embrace’ With Deluxe Reissue
Music For Nations releases the 30th anniversary edition on October 30 as a splattered vinyl LP and a numbered deluxe coffin-box CD, with the CD adding the bonus tracks “Hell Awaits” and “Carmilla's Masque”. Signed artwork prints are available from the band's store.
Current Members
Current line-up as published by the official site, verified on 2026-09-29.
Albums
Cradle of Filth's fourteenth studio album, from March 2025 and their first for Napalm Records; the Japanese edition came out the same day.
Cradle of Filth's thirteenth studio album, from October 2021, an existential record that looks squarely at the end of the species.
Cradle of Filth's twelfth studio album, from September 2017, built on the Victorian fascination with death.
Cradle of Filth's eleventh studio album, from July 2015: their first for Nuclear Blast and the first outing for a new line-up.
Cradle of Filth's tenth studio album, from October 2012 and the only one made by the band as a three-piece.
Cradle of Filth's ninth studio album, from November 2010, a concept record about Lilith.
Cradle of Filth's eighth studio album, from October 2008, a concept record following the life of the fifteenth-century French baron Gilles de Rais.
Cradle of Filth's seventh studio album, from October 2006, and the one with Ville Valo of HIM singing on it.
Cradle of Filth's sixth studio album, from September 2004: their biggest seller, and the one whose title track brought a Grammy nomination.
Cradle of Filth's fifth studio album, from March 2003: their only record for a major label, drawn from Milton's Paradise Lost.
Cradle of Filth's fourth album, issued by Music for Nations on 30 October 2000 and drawn from Clive Barker's novel Cabal.
Cradle of Filth's third album, issued by Music for Nations in 1998. It is a concept record following the legend of Elizabeth Báthory.
Cradle of Filth's second studio album, from November 1996: the record that carried the band's name out of England, and a gothic black metal classic.
Cradle of Filth's debut album, from February 1994, and a then-unusual welding of gothic metal to black metal.