Cradle Of Filth "Dusk...and Her Embrace"

Dusk... and Her Embrace is the second studio album by English extreme metal band Cradle of Filth. It was released on 19 August 1996 and is their first release on the label Music for Nations.

Much of the material for the album was written while the band were still under Cacophonous Records' contract. Speaking to Ryan Bird of Kerrang! In 2008, Dani Filth remembered:

This was a bit of a weird one. We actually recorded it as our second release, but we then had to take our label to court which meant that most of it was temporarily lost for legal reasons. The next thing I know the band had split into two-halves, and after releasing the V Empire EP my half was able to re-record and finally release the album. In a way it actually worked in our favour, because after nearly two years of legal battles and non-stop hassle I think the troubles of the times actually came through on the recording. We actually worked with Kit Woolven on that one, who most people knew from working with Thin Lizzy, so it had a very lush edge as well as this distinctive, dark vibe. To this day this is the album that a lot of our fans seem to be really drawn to. And it catapulted us into a whole new world.

Filth later told Kerrang! that the tone and content of the record was also partly the result of Cradle's isolation from the European black metal scene:

Being segregated from mainland Europe really divided us [from that scene], and over time we felt more and more alienated from it. The result was that Dusk and Her Embrace was a quintessentially British album. It was just what felt right. I grew up on Hammer Horror... and we were very much also immersed in the history of witchcraft in Suffolk. There's a lot of spiritual mythology and hauntings in that area, and we channelled that into the album, which is why it has that sort of vampiric feel to it.

A music video was produced for the album's title track, featuring the instrumental "Carmilla's Masque" as a coda.


The album climaxes with a guest speech from Venom's Cronos on the final track, "Haunted Shores".

Dusk and Her Embrace was released on 19 August 1996 by record label Music for Nations. It charted just outside of the UK top 100, at 107.

The album's full title is "Dusk and Her Embrace: Litanies of Damnation, Death and the Darkly Erotic".

The title of the song "The Graveyard by Moonlight" is taken from the fifth track of "Orgiastic Pleasures Foul", the band's second demo. These are different songs with the same title.

According to Frank Wasmus' a short history of Dusk... and Her Embrace - The Original Sin, Gian Pyres didn't record any guitars for the album, but he shares a songwriting credit for "Malice Through the Looking Glass" with the rest of the line-up.

Recording information:


Recorded at D.E.P. International Studios, Birmingham.