Following these changes, another demo was recorded, titled Total Fucking Darkness (released commercially in 2014, bolstered with rehearsal sessions and a surviving track from the abandoned Goetia album).

While writing material for a new album, the band negotiated their departure from Cacophonous, and in November 1996, signed with European label Music for Nations and guitarist Gian Pyres joined.

Next year the group returned with From the Cradle to Enslave, an EP that featured new drummer Adrian Erlandsson (formerly of Sweden's At the Gates and The Haunted), as Barker had departed to join Dimmu Borgir.

The band's several lineup changes continued apace as Paul Allender rejoined the group and Martin Powell (ex-Anathema and My Dying Bride) replaced Smith on keyboards for the full-length album Midian, Cradle's last for Music For Nations, which was appropriately released on Halloween 2000.

The group signed to Sony for one album in 2003, adding a choir and orchestra for Damnation and a Day, and moved to Roadrunner Records for 2004's Nymphetamine, 2006's Thornography, and 2008's Godspeed on the Devil's Thunder.