England's Cradle of Filth open their latest disc with the requisite campiness of Motley Crue's
Shout at the Devil—“In the beginning …” blah, blah, blah—but from there, the corpsepainted sextet delve into a seriously sinister amalgamation of Iron Maiden riffage and Carcass-inspired melodic assault. Taken in that context,
Nymphetamine is a solid “extreme metal” record, replete with
Phantom of the Opera keyboard passages and oh-so-dramatic interludes. Lyrically, most of the songs border on the kind of ridiculousness that made Type O Negative a household name for about 13 minutes back in the day, but you can't have everything I guess.