Dani Filth Leads A Night Of Unrelenting Intensity As Cradle Of Filth Return To Australia

It’s Friday evening and Dani Filth, the eloquent, erudite and affable frontman of Cradle Of Filth, is chatting with me this time in preparation for the upcoming Australian tour with Devil Driver in July this year, discussing expanding outside the black metal world into the mainstream and lifelong connection to his football team, Queens Park Rangers.

‘It’s a family thing. I was a mascot when I was six years old. I go there quite, well, not that regularly, but my brother has a season ticket, so if he’s away, I usually use it. Or if I’m in the country and I’ve got a spare Saturday and we’re playing someone good (I’ll go).’

The formalities of our football teams out the way, there is another classic match looming in Australia this July when Suffolk’s finest go head-to-head against Dez Fafara’s Devil Driver in a rematch previously taken place on American soil.

‘To be honest, we’re not a million miles away as far as music’s concerned. It’s not reggae and deep trance. It’s metal. They may be groove, meat and potatoes metal, and we may be the exotic dessert, but we’ve done two of these tours together in the States. Both were really successful. I guess it came about because Dez is my manager and one of my best friends, we talk all the time. Having done two of these tours, the Australian booking agent was all over it and said, “I want to see that down here.” So, he just made it work! It just works really well. It’s not two bands that sound exactly the same. It’s just two bands that are not a million miles away from each other, and you can see the camaraderie there.’

Underneath the garnish of Cradle Of Filth, there lies genuine musical genius, dabbling in not only black metal, also metal grooves, ambient theatre soundscapes, and just straight down line hard rock. They just Cradle Of Filth it up, if that makes sense.

‘It does make sense and you’re not off the mark. We were just trying to write good songs. I think there’s a lot of times some bands, and we’ve been guilty of it as well, just trying too hard to show their arsenal. We can do this. We can play that fast. We can sing that low. At the end of the day, that’s all very well and good, but you can’t go out on that trajectory and avoid the big issue, which is songs. So, with the new album, which we’ve almost finished writing, it’s all about songs’

‘As a lyricist, obviously I want people to enjoy my lyrics, but not at the expense of a song. We want to make songs that stick in people’s craws, people remember them, people enjoy them. Yeah, we wear our influences on our sleeves. We grew up during the ’80s. I still think that’s the best era of music thus far, so obviously we’re going to have semblances of that in what we write as well. I guess we just feel like we’ve got a bit more nostalgia the older we get about it.’

How does Mr. Filth describe his own show, one wonders?

‘Well, it’s going to be cinematic, loud, raucous, energetic, theatrical, and an experience.’

At the time of this interview, Cradle Of Filth are one of the most prolific working bands out there. In thirty two years, fourteen albums, four EP’s and couple of live albums, a year on from the release of The Screaming Of The Valkyries, to hear from the man himself they are writing for the next release is a commitment to astonishing work rate which leaves me flabbergasted.

‘It’s our job, and we love it, and we’re creative people. We draw influence from a lot of things that don’t dissipate. Nature doesn’t dissipate. Music, theatre, drama, cinematography, all those things, dreams, wherever people take influence from, they don’t disappear. So, I guess that’s one reason why we’re still pretty prolific.’

Appreciating the man’s honesty at a time he wishes to push on with his legacy is a honour. It’s that legacy that over thirty years has seen Mr. Filth transcend the black metal scene to mainstream TV, and charts, as guest on TV shows and epic collaborations.

‘We just do what we want to do. Audiences are a bit of fickle mistresses in respect of they just have this tunnel vision of what they want you to be. “Oh, you’re a Black metal singer. This is what you’re going to do.” Then when you do something, like you’re in the press for cancelling a gig because you’re about to be electrocuted and everybody’s badmouthing, “Why did you do that? ” Well, you’ve set me up as this bad black metal singer and now you want me to be nice. Fuck you!’

‘I take great pride in, if we’re going to do a collaboration, I’ve turned loads of collaborations down because I don’t want to sing on a fucking Death Metal record or a Black Metal record. I want to do stuff that’s challenging, that’s fun that people just go, “Oh my God, I can’t believe it, he did a song with Twiztid. He did a song with Bring Me The Horizon. He did a song with The 69 Eyes!’

‘I’ve just done another collaboration with … Well, I can’t say who it is, but I’m shooting a video for it, so the record company obviously think it’s one of the stronger songs on the album, but it’s with a female artist. It’s another “Oh my God, really? What the fuck? ” I delight in that. I delight in pushing boundaries, and that’s what we’ve done our whole career. That’s what the whole premise of what it was supposed to be. I see black metal as a movement indeed, but I also see it as a lifting of restrictions, a life plan, a challenge, not hindered by the trappings of musical genres, which unfortunately that’s exactly what it became. It was like everybody wanted to sound like Darkthrone and posing around in forests, and that is not the essence of black metal.’

The man has vast musical knowledge, as we discuss Mayhem’s first record that was in pink vinyl, not the blood red recently re-issued, the comeback of Alice Cooper in the 80’s and that the new album from Cradle Of Filth is scheduled for March next year. However, as our half-hour chat runs to a close, we finish with two institutions merging into one and a beautiful story to finish with, lighting the depth of the gentleman as he recalls proposing to his fiancé at Donnington Park last year.

‘The idea flitted through my mind and then I was like, “You know what? If you do this, it’d be great. If you don’t do it, you’re going to regret not having done it” because Donnington is, like you say, a British institution. We were playing to ten thousand people in a packed tent. They were pouring out the sides. It was an opportunity where my fiancé, she was going to be on the side of the stage. I just thought, fuck it! There’s some things you need to do in life that you just have to go head first into and then worry about the consequences later. I didn’t even consider the possibility of being turned down, which would’ve been another thing, but that’s something you don’t know until you do it.’

Do it he did and the happy couple will be married in June, right before Cradle Of Filth descend on Australia. What a great wedding present it would be if we all went to the shows.

Interview By Iain McCallum

Catch Cradle Of Filth on tour with Devildriver on the following dates, tickets from The Phoenix…