Cradle of Filth have officially announced their 14th album, The Screaming of the Valkyries, and to herald the news, unleashed the extreme-metal anthem “To Live Deliciously,” a seeming nod to the Robert Eggers’ 2015 movie, The Witch, and its memorable devil-goat Black Phillip.
“The song is about the celebration of life,” COF ringleader Dani Filth commented of the album-opening cut. “Of indulging in everything unfettered from the conformities of religion, fashion or state. Free from guilt or constraint. As nature intended.
He added: “It could be read as a hedonistic life code. And a positive one if not done at the expense or the suffering of others. To delight in simply ‘being.’ Being alive and free in the here and now.”
While it opens with “To Live Deliciously,” Cradle’s new album sadly will not include that long-anticipated, music-world-crossing collab between the U.K. black-metal vets and English pop star Ed Sheeran. It will, however, harken back to the band’s Midian and Dusk… and Her Embrace periods, “especially in the atmosphere and the subject matter,” according to Filth.
The Screaming of the Valkyries is due out March 21st via Napalm Records and available for pre-order now.
The Screaming of the Valkyries tracklist:
“To Live Deliciously”
“Demagoguery”
“The Trinity of Shadows”
“Non Omnis Moriar”
“White Hellebore”
“You Are My Nautilus”
“Malignant Perfection”
“Ex Sanguine Draculae”
“When Misery Was a Stranger”