For the last twenty years Cradle Of Filth has been establishing themselves as somewhat of an anomaly within the world of heavy music. They are a Black Metal inspired band with huge gothic overtones and nineteenth century horror inspirations. It’s hard to categorize exactly where Cradle fit in and that’s won the fans but also some potshots and hatred from metal purists who find their style too commercial.
The band recently put out Darkly, Darkly, Venus, Aversa, a high concept album dealing with everything from the Bible to mythology to fourteenth century gothic horror. Standing at the bow of this metal ship is Dani Filth, the enigmatic front man for Cradle Of Filth. After much back and forth, missed phone calls, failed attempts and general mayhem, I finally got a chance to speak with Dani about the new album, the new members, new projects and the ever changing world of Cradle Of Filth.
CRAVEONLINE: So what’s new with Cradle Of Filth?
DANI FILTH: Well, today I’m at home in England just sort of recovering from my wife’s birthday, and it’s just started to snow which is welcoming. As for Cradle, we’re getting together from all parts of the world, rehearsing and getting read for our South American tour, which goes up to Christmas.
CRAVEONLINE: Any American dates in the near future?
DANI FILTH: Yeah we’re coming out there in February on the Creatures From The Black Abyss tour, which has Natchmystium, Daniel Lionseye, and Turisas opening up for us. I’m also putting together another album.
CRAVEONLINE: So soon?
DANI FILTH: We actually started this album before the new proper album took precedence. Now that Darkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa is out of the way, I can get back to this record, which is an orchestral album based on the first four albums from Cradle Of Filth. It’s songs like Summer Dying Fast and Agnostic Romance and others all done in a huge symphonic style, like a horror movie soundtrack.
CRAVEONLINE: How long has that been going on?
DANI FILTH: About three months before last Christmas, and then off and on.
CRAVEONLINE: Is it you alone or the whole band or what?
DANI FILTH: Mark Robson is a keyboardist who did shows with us way back and he did most of the keys on Godspeed. He’s helping with this one song that’s really the only proper Cradle sounding song on the album. The rest are huge horror sounding gothic versions of other work from those first four records. It’ll be called Midnight In The Labyrinth.
CRAVEONLINE: Cool, are you close to being done?
DANI FILTH: Almost done, just have to put the choir on it and some heavy strings like cello and violin.
CRAVEONLINE: Darkly, Darkly, Venus, Aversa is pretty epic, let’s start with the title, where did it originate?
DANI FILTH: It’s suggested by the artwork, because everything was running concurrently and that was the last thing to be put in place. The whole thing was supposed to have a sense of false security about it, very gothic and beautiful but hiding something sinister just beneath. Venus Aversa is also a medical term for anal sex from the nineteenth century (laughs). In this case it means the opposite of the goddess of love, it’s the goddess of lost, it’s Lilith and how she’s known. I added the two “Darkly” to give it a sense of being evil, a mantra or a spell, something poetic. The cover inspired all of it.
CRAVEONLINE: So who is Lilith and how did you discover her?
DANI FILTH: Well, Lilith has long been known as the first trespasser, even before Eve, she was Adam’s first wife, created out of filth and sediment. She wanted equality in the Garden Of Eden with Adam and because she didn’t get it she fled. Along the way she hooked up with Samael, the same demon that crawled on his belly to Eve and seduced her with knowledge. In mythology Lilith fled to the Red Sea, lived in a cave and gave birth to lots of demons. She became the originator of evil.
CRAVEONLINE: The new record isn’t about that story though.
DANI FILTH: No, we wanted to have this dark goddess reemerging, coming back into the world. She’s suddenly taking an interest in humanity at this particular point in our story. I wanted a powerful figure like Lilith as the main protagonist if I was going to write a gothic horror story. I thought the best place to introduce her was fourteenth century England. The Knights Templar brings her cult back to England. It has all kinds of things in it, Carnalized Nuns, sex and death, Sumerian and Egyptian and Greek mythology. We wanted to make it very cinematic with both the story and the music, which was hard, finding the equality there.
CRAVEONLINE: Equality?
DANI FILTH: We didn’t want it to be too symphonic because it is a heavy metal record, and though it is a concept we also wanted people to be able to enjoy them as a collection of songs. Finding that equality with everything was difficult while building the record.
CRAVEONLINE: It’s hard to make an album that people can dig on the surface or go deeper into if they want.
DANI FILTH: And also making a concept that runs concurrent because it is a story, with each song being a chapter.
CRAVEONLINE: You were quoted as saying this album was a “Feminine companion to Godspeed On The Devil’s Thunder”, what did you mean by that?
DANI FILTH: That got kind of misinterpreted along the road. What I meant was the previous album was also a concept album. Don’t get us wrong; we’re not falling into a concept album rut or trap, it’s just been suggested by the music. I thought it was time that we had this character of Lilith, since she was the originator of Evil; it makes her one step behind God. The character in our last album was a historical one named Gilles de Rais, one time compatriot of Joan Of Arc. When she died at the hands of the English, Gilles turned to sorcery and witchcraft and started kidnapping, abusing and mutilating children. So he became this consensual ogre and, in fact, became Bluebeard.
On that album the music was very thuggish, brutish, it married the attributes of the character we were writing about. On Darkly Darkly the music is vast and more elegant. When I say feminine I don’t mean in a sexual way, I mean that the music is geared more towards telling the story of this dark archetype with Lilith. It’s a sister companion, that would be a better terminology.
CRAVEONLINE: How has being on an independent label, like Peaceville Records, helped with all of this creativity?
DANI FILTH: I think people long ago realized that major labels are sort of like banks in some respect. The bigger the vehicle, the more you’re seen. Toward the back-end of our relationship with Roadrunner Records, and I don’t mean any offense by this, it was great to be on Roadrunner, we did feel that they were looking more at bands they wanted to break the Billboard Top Fifty every time, really commercial acts. That wasn’t really what the label was about to begin with and we felt the last record didn’t really get the push that previous records had. So we moved to a label where we were a bigger fish in a smaller pond.
It’s helped because now we get to choose who we work with, who does our press in different areas and so on. It’s really a hands on and Peaceville has a lot of acts that I can relate to, bands like Autopsy, Katatonia, My Dying Bride and so on. If you’re not changing the ingredients but just improving on them it can only work out for the best. Especially nowadays with people having monetary problems, everybody is being a bit more imaginative and working a bit harder.
CRAVEONLINE: Major labels don’t really know how to be hands on; they just throw money at the problem.
DANI FILTH: Exactly. We used to be on Sony but we walked off after making one album because everybody who signed us changed and the label didn’t know what to do with us when those people left. A year after we left Sony they were still running our website and they didn’t know about it (laughs). It’s just too big and got lost in the loop.
CRAVEONLINE: So what was behind the departure of Rosy Smith, Sarah Jezebel and Charles Hedger?
DANI FILTH: Sarah was getting married and moving to Australia, so she couldn’t do some tours and it kind of petered out on that level. I think that was evident on the songs from Godspeed, it was more of an exit for her. Now she’s got her own band. As for Rosy and Charles both of them left to finish a music degree. It’s a little like working at a magazine or radio station where people move on.
CRAVEONLINE: Has the new blood been good for Cradle?
DANI: Well Ashley (Ellyllon) sort of remains a shadowy figure. She’s half and half; she has her own career writing music for films back in LA. We may even use somebody else live for that respect. James (Mcllroy) left to get a proper job and when Charles left he decided to return to the band. It’s a strange sort of merry-go-round I suppose.
CRAVEONLINE: Is it hard being the main creative force behind the band?
DANI FILTH: Well that’s not altogether true. Paul Allender is more the main songwriter and my right hand man. We’re a very tight unit and when people come in they’re not just chosen willy-nilly. You do go on the road for a long time and you become like a family. Strangely our crew has changed less than the band has (laughs). We’re getting more professional, believe it or not.
CRAVEONLINE: How will you bring Darkly Darkly to life on stage?
DANI FILTH: First you have to have a good sound guy, and we do. We’re a different beast live, I think most bands are, unless you play along to DAT tapes. It’s the energy and the atmosphere more than anything else.
CRAVEONLINE: So who inspires you?
DANI FILTH: All kinds of things I suppose. I love horror movies, really into nineteenth century horror fiction. I’m really into Lovecraft and Poe and Louis Stevenson, that kind of era, that kind of English mentality. We actually finished a book called The Gospel Of Filth, which was a Grimoir about the occult we’ve been writing for about five years. Well, I was more like a co-pilot to the writer Gavin Badley. I love soundtracks, horror soundtracks, there’s so much that’s there to influence you.
CRAVEONLINE: What is the most exciting and frustrating thing about the current state of heavy music?
DANI FILTH: I think the fact that music sales and live sales have gone down. Live sales because people just don’t have the money, but album sales because people can just download as many albums as they want instead of buying them. Metal itself has a really great batch of bands it just takes some looking. It’s hard because to be a proper band you have to go out and tour and if people are not buying albums then the label don’t put them in the studio. It has, pushed people towards more creativity with the record industry in such dire straits. You’ll get people who will shine through, everybody else will fall by the way side.
CRAVEONLINE: When Cradle Of Filth finally calls it a day, what do you want your legacy to be?
DANI FILTH: It’d be nice to known as Cradle Of Filth and not pushed into a sub-genre. That would be good. And on my tombstone it should say, “I told you I was ill”.
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