Interview #595: Cradle Of Filth

Cradle Of Filth are the biggest extreme metal band in the world, full stop. From their humble, corpse-painted beginnings back in 1991 they have grown to be loved the world-over for their thundering heavy metal and gothic storytelling. At their head stands the man who rocks the Cradle; Dani Filth, whose dark lyrical explorations lie at the heart of the band, and at the heart of their ninth album, the newly released Darkly Darkly Venus Aversa.

I Like Music sat down with Dani to chat about the new album’s central character Lilith, writing concept albums, his love of the gothic and romantic, and the relationship between extreme metal and major labels.

“I Like Music because…it’s like painting with sound.” Dani Filth, Cradle Of Filth

ILM: Tell us about the narrative behind Darkly Darkly Venus Aversa.

Dani: We’ve done a home-spun gothic horror story that involves the first trespasser, who was Lilith, Adam’s first wife before Eve. She didn’t want to be beneath Adam, and wanted joint ownership of Eden, so she fled and hooked up with Samael the serpent. Supposedly she became this dark archetype who gave birth to thousands of demons and thus was the reason for evil being in the world. Jewish mythology sees her in a different light though, viewing her as a strong female icon. We’ve used a bit of both, though rather than dealing with the creation myth we’ve brought her into a story that runs from the 14th century through to the present day. It involves Sumerian and Egyptian mythology, nun-sploitation and Knights Templar all rolled up into a story about sex and death.

ILM: When did you come across Lilith, and what made you decide that she was the right character for the new album to revolve around?

Dani: We’d come back off tour and had a nucleus of three or four different songs, and I must admit I was struggling a little bit at the time to think what to write about. Then for some reason I suddenly got inspired by her and read a bit more about it. She’s always been a character that’s been behind the band since our first inception, so I thought maybe I could concentrate on her for this album. The music, as well, was suggesting her; it was sinuous, elegant, fast and a bit melodic. So once we had a few songs I just thought “let’s do it.”

ILM: Is it something of a ‘eureka moment’ when you hit upon a concept that you want to run with?

Dani: At first you think “this is great!” Then you suddenly realise all the hard work that goes in to trying to make the songs stand individually as songs and not simply be cogs in a bigger wheel. You’ve got to be able to enjoy each song as a heavy metal song – you can’t afford to have any fillers – but at the same time they have to exist as a whole. Some people do albums that are supposedly conceptual records, but all they really have is a bit of artwork that draws the songs together and it’s all a bit tenuous. We tried to make something that’s a full story with each song acting as a chapter. It’s a very cinematic album. It has calmer moments and explosions of music where it needs to, but not at the expense of individual tracks.

ILM: Do you find that approach to be a more creatively rewarding process than writing a series of unconnected songs?

Dani: Well it is if you get it right. It’s like a puzzle. Once you’ve got a nucleus of tracks you can go to the musicians and tell them about the idea and what you’re after. At first it works really well because you’ve got a blank canvas, but as the canvas fills it gets harder. Fortunately we wrote sixteen tracks, five of which were of equal merit but that didn’t fill those particular gaps that we needed to fill.

ILM: Those themes present on the album – sex, death, religion – are ones that Cradle Of Filth repeatedly explore. What is it that keeps you coming back to them?

Dani: As a band we’ve always taken inspiration from 19th century literature, as well as the environment in which we live. I live in Suffolk, which when I was growing up I knew as the Witch County. Also, my wife and I used to live in a house that was once frequented by the 17th century Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins. In fact we’re sure that he haunted it as well. I also used to watch Hammer Horror films growing up, and was exposed to a lot of quintessentially English mythologies. Then I got really into history. I suppose the basis of the band has always been looking at mythologies and belief systems. All good fairytales are fables. They have a message behind them. We looked at the basis of each fairytale, belief system or mythology and then built on top of it.

ILM: So has that been a key interest of yours throughout your entire life?

Dani: Yeah. As I say, it was an amalgam of the environment in which I lived, growing into gothic horror films and then starting to read poetry by Byron, Shelley & Coleridge, and stories by H.P. Lovecraft and Arthur Machen.

ILM: Extreme music has always had a close relationship to those sorts of subjects and source materials; do you think that interest is what drew you towards it?

Dani: Well, yes, but I listen to all kinds of things. I listen to soundtracks more than anything else. I find it very hard to listen to music with lyrics in it when I’m working. At the moment I’ve been listening to things like 1492, Coppola’s Dracula, The Omen Trilogy, Pan’s Labyrinth, Children Of The Corn. Then I also listen to trance… But yes, I think that interest did draw us to extreme music because commercial music is often too throw-away to incorporate these elements. The only people who really do are bands like The Prodigy or Gorillaz, and all they do is nick samples from films they like.

ILM: Do you have any characters or mythologies in mind for future projects?

Dani: Well after we’d done the last album, Godspeed and the Devil’s Thunder, which was about Gilles De Rais, I swore blind to many a journalist that I would never do another concept album. People have suggested we do Sweeney Todd or Frankenstein, but it’ll just turn into a farce if we do that.

ILM: You don’t want it to become ‘your thing’.

Dani: Exactly. We don’t want to be known for doing strange rock operas. So no, I’ve got things in mind for tracks, but nothing as grandiose as this or the last album.

ILM: Moving from the lyrics to the music; you’ve said this is the fastest and most brutal album you’ve written. Was that planned, or did it just turn out that way?

Dani: It just turned out that way, which I think is a result of the group of people working on it; it was a slightly different band to the last album. It might also have been connected to the time of year, or where we recorded the album. Outside influences like that. Our drummer was also just really enjoying himself, so it got a bit quicker as a result of that! So no, it wasn’t planned out at all. We try to avoid being contrived. We don’t want to be known as a shock-rock band. It’s very easy to throw in some curse-words and a few naughty pictures, and while we have in the past got out of bed the wrong side of the proverbial grave, that isn’t our way of working.

ILM: Do you feel a pressure to evolve with each album?

Dani: Definitely. We never like doing two albums the same. It may not be overly apparent to a Martian who picks up two of our albums, but to our fans there are loads of little things that add up to give this record a new flavour. It may be that there are more guitar solos, or perhaps there are different melodic or vocal techniques, but it’s there somewhere.

ILM: Do you ever find yourselves listening to other bands with whom you may be compared by fans or press, and comparing notes?

Dani: Well not on this record. I made a point not to. Whilst recording I would leave the studio to drive around the countryside in my new car, and I’d bought a load of CDs by bands like KISS and Motley Crew to play whilst I did. A load of bubblegum music that I could just stick on and sing along to. I got Bad Religion, and HIM as well. Stuff that was far-flung from the band. I didn’t want any outside influences. I mean, of course you do keep your nose to the ground. I do have a few firm favourites from the current extreme metal rostra, but I’m not one of these people that are so into it that I have to buy every single album. I’d rather buy ten really good albums than have an iPod full of shit.

ILM: Has moving from a major label to an independent for this album made a big difference for you?

Dani: Yeah, absolutely. It looks like a step down, but it’s actually the other way around. For Sony, we were signed by someone who was really into the band, but then two months later he had another job in another part of the world and the person who took over wasn’t quite as keen. Roadrunner just weren’t using their imagination when promoting us. Now, being a slightly bigger fish in a smaller, more creative pond, we’ve got people coming up with ideas all the time. There’s a tight-knit group who share a love for what we’re doing.

ILM: Do you think that an extreme metal band like Cradle Of Filth can ever find a satisfactory home on a major label?

Dani: Yes, I think they can. It’s about vision. Nobody would have thought that a band like Cradle Of Filth could get to the size that we have. Marilyn Manson and Slipknot are other similar examples. Then you look at the crap you get, like Cheryl Cole, for example. She can’t sing, but she’s everywhere, and more often than not it isn’t even about the music. But on the other side of the coin, people just aren’t made aware of music like ours. There’s currently a resurgence of people enjoying the escapism of being scared; going to horror movies and things like that. When they’re made aware of this other part of music they find that they love it. They just need to be exposed to it first.