After Moonspell’s shockingly good performance, it was time for Cradle Of Filth to deliver something shocking as well. The room was fast filling, and it was easy to see whom the majority of the Odensians had come to watch.

“C’mon! Greetings Denmark! I’d pronounce your city, but I’d have to have my tongue removed first.”
- Daniel ‘Dani Filth’ Davey (vocals)

While Cradle Of Filth took an unusual road and dug back in their discography with the opener Gilded Cunt, instead of doing the usual thing, which is to open with the newest material you’ve got, this was pretty much where the surprises from this band both began and ended.
There’s nothing new in the band showing up in new costumes, or the fact that Dani Filth’s corpsepaint keeps evolving. It can be fun to look at, sure, but there’s nothing surprising in it.
Neither is there anything surprising in their music - sure, they keep on pumping out new material on a regular basis, but does it really evolve? Not noticeably, if you ask me.
Don’t get me wrong though, a show doesn’t have to be either revolutionary or surprising to be good, although it can certainly help matters along.

So, was Cradle Of Filth any good?
Well, for the longest time, the only words I could muster were “I have no idea what to say about this”.
It wasn’t really good, nor was it really bad. It just, was. They were there, they played a whole bunch of songs, and I simply didn’t feel a thing about it.
Filth walked around, screaming his lungs out, while the front musicians did their best to look evil. Richard ‘Rich’ Shaw was actually quite fun. He seemed present, and engaged with the audience, and had a playful nature that kept him interesting to watch - at one point, he mimicked a marionette doll, at another he used a water bottle to play his guitar. Little things like that just kept the mood up. Marek ‘Ashok’ Šmerda wasn’t much fun to begin with, but little by little, he seemed to pick up on the playfulness of Shaw, and at the end seemed, if not as imaginative as his brother in guitars, at least engaged in making a connection with the crowd, and that’s an all-important thing.
I have mentioned in my Moonspell review, that Lindsay Schoolcraft’s guest appearance there was the most interesting part of her performance on the entire evening, adn I stand by it. Hidden away as she was in the back, there really didn’t seem to be much point in her even being there - a missed opportunity, as she clearly has some assets to bring to the table. Once in a while, one of the others would walk up to her, and in this short interaction, she lit up, only to be forgotten again after the other person left. Martin ‘Marthus’ Škaroupka, who is second only to Filth in seniority in the band, was basically invisible throughout the show.

“Saturday night, drinking night, and you’re fucking quiet?! What the fuck?!”
- Filth (Vocals)

Even so, the now larger crowd displayed more life than they had for the previous show - now a small but wild mosh in the middle of the floor, and after a while we even saw some crowdsurfers sail by.
Dani Filth seemed forthcoming, and invited people to join the band on stage at several points - he even dedicated the new song You Will Know The Lion By His Claws to anyone who would join them, or at least get a moshpit going. Contrary to his words though, what we saw was a stagehand who would instantly and brutally remove anyone who’d even consider taking Filth up on his word - hard to say what, if any, the point was of this…
It’d seem like there was a limit to even the most dedicated fans’ patience as well. As dedicated they were to make the best of it at the start of the show, interest slipped away little by little, and when we, after what seemed like aeons, reached the encore, the Odensians began to quietly slip out of the hall, so that we ended up saying farewell to the band with only about half the crowd that had greeted them upon arrival. Could this be the reason the band only felt obliged to take a bow to their stageman, with his cellphone camera, and not to the people who had paid good money to get to see the show? This, as well as many other questions must go unanswered.

In the end, the only shocking thing about Cradle Of Filth, is how utterly indifferent their performance was. The little highlights brought on by Shaw were enough to keep us there, but not enough to counterweigh the boredom of wholeness.

Setlist:

Ave Satani
Gilded Cunt
Beneath The Howling Stars
Blackest Magick In Practice
Heartbreak And Seance
Bathory Aria: Benighted Like Usher / A Murder Of Ravens In Fugue / Eyes That Witnessed Madness
Dusk And Her Embrace
The Death Of Love
You Will Know The Lion By His Claw
A Bruise Upon The Silent Moon
The Promise Of Fever
Nymphetamine (Fix)
Her Ghost In The Fog
Born In A Burial Gown
From The Cradle To Enslave
Blooding The Hounds Of Hell