In November, Cradle of Filth will be playing in Portugal again. Known worldwide for their energetic and engaging performances, and for combining musical talent with profound lyrics and a breathtaking stage presence, the band accumulated successes and became a reference in the underground. The concert on November 24th, at LAV in Lisbon, promises to be an unforgettable show, with high quality production and a selection of themes that range from classics to the most recent hits, guaranteed to please both long-time fans and new ones. Expectations are high, and tickets are selling out quickly, proving the band's great popularity in the country. Metal Imperium could not miss the opportunity to talk to Dani Filth about this event.
Hello Dani! Are you fully recovered from the Australian tour?
Yeah, I think so, but I still have irregular sleeping patterns.
M.I.- The band has been very active and the live frenzy will continue until the end of the year. Next month you will perform a special old school ritual set, headlining Damnation Festival. What can you tell us about this special old school ritual set? Does it mean you’ll play old songs only?
Right, yes. Actually it was a bit of a surprise for us, because the promoter just decided that's what they wanted and then told us. Bearing in mind we were already undertaking a six-week tour of Europe and we also had a different setlist for Australia, it meant that we had to learn a load of new stuff but, yeah, essentially it means material from as specified by the promoter from the first album up to “Nymphetamine”.
M.I. - You’ll be coming to Portugal on the 24th November with the “By Order of the Dragon Tour”. The band’s still promoting the latest full-length “Existence is Futile”? Or have you been doing a special set this whole time?
No, we've been playing a variety of songs from our back catalog. We've been playing three songs from “Existence is futile”, especially in Australia, as we haven't visited there since the album's release. We played “She is a fire” from the live album but the rest of the material was basically from “The Principal of evil made flesh” onward.
M.I. - The setlist of the “By the order of the dragon” tour will be different from the setlist of the “Necromantic Fantasies” tour you were doing earlier this year? What will change in the setlist from one tour to the other?
Of course! Well, I can't remember off the top of my head, to be honest, but it's a completely different setlist. It does span the entirety of our career! We want to keep our fans happy and we realized that we have a lot of fans in Portugal that have been there from the moment that we first played in Penafiel back in the day. It was amazing! So there's stuff from across our back catalog.
M.I. - Currently, what’s your favourite song to play live? Why?
I think “She is a fire”! I really like that song, I really enjoy playing it. We're yet to play our new single which comes out on the 22nd which we will be playing in Portugal. I love the song but I haven't actually rehearsed with it yet to be honest. The only time I've actually sang it is if I've sang along to it listening to the album and other than that it was when I recorded it.
M.I. - There is a post on the band’s social media with a new cover that says October 22nd. Is this finally the highly anticipated single featuring Ed Sheeran?
No, no, no! That's coming on an undisclosed date…
M.I. - …we talked in May last year and you told me that the track would be released a few months later but it's been over a year… Why the massive delay?
Yeah, we were doing a lot of touring, Ed released an album and his management wanted us to keep it back for a little while. He decided to release two albums last year, one of which was a bit of a surprise, so that kind of moved it. Also we didn't want to bring it out on its own and overshadow our forthcoming record or any of the tours, so we're going to bring it out on an undisclosed date.
M.I. - The cover online is for the single or for the new album? What's the name of the single?
The single is called “Malignant Perfection”.
M.I. - Being on tour has been na obstacle for you when it comes to release the new album?
It might have been a bit of an obstacle in respect of us touring a lot, not for releasing the record but actually recording it, finishing it off and, once you delay things, then you have to fit into an order. You can't just release anything just like “Oh, we've finished the album, we're going to release it tomorrow”. It has to be cataloged, it has to go to the record company, the record company has to slot it into their launch schedule. I believe, the album's actually coming out at the end of March, beginning of April, and will be preceded by three singles, one of which is the one that's coming out on October the 22nd.
M.I. - What can you tell us about this album already?
It's very difficult to talk about the new album. I say it's difficult, because it's quite away at the present. It's Cradle of Filth 2024, it's fast, it's heavy, it's catchy, it’s all that. There's so much going on, it's hard to describe it in words. I've long given up trying to describe a new album. People will get the idea from the first three singles and then they'll be able to make their minds up when the album actually drops, but it is a progression for Cradle of Filth. It moves on from where we were on “Existence is futile” with a nod distinctly back to past records, it has the flavour in places of “Dusk”, it has a few flavours of “Midian” and a lot of flavours of everything in between and after.
M.I. - So that's quite high standard for the older fans who are probably eager to listen to it!
Well, it's not “Dusk and her embrace”. It has a feeling, it has a vibe! You cannot reproduce old albums! They were set in a particular time, they were influenced by particular things that happened around that record. It was 1996, it was a different time, a different world, a different different mindset, different musicians. What makes it so distinct is that it is an album that remains solely on its own. It's like “Reign in blood”, it's like “Power Slave”. They never replicated “Power Slave”! Afterwards, Maiden did “Somewhere in Time” which is a distinctly different album from “Power Slave”. “South of Heaven” was a distinctly different album from “Reign in Blood”. I remember Tom Araya saying “Don't expect “Reign in blood 2”. This is a new album!”. Personally I prefer “Reign in Blood” but that's my preference and bands like to reinvent themselves and, even if they didn't like to reinvent themselves, it's a product of time, temperament, situation, influence… many things influence an album! If you try and replicate an album, for example, if we went back and tried to do “Cruelty and the Beast” it wouldn't come out the same because of all the reasons I mentioned and it would be a bit convoluted. It's like when people try and do black metal and they use DarkThrone as a reference point. I mean, some people love it but other people are like “This isn't moving the scene forward in any way but it's just a homage”.
M.I. - The one thing that keeps the same is your fabulous writing. How do you manage to write so many great tracks? What inspires you?
Well, again, it's outside influence. I'm a massive reader. I'm the only person of the band who lives in England now. We have a Scottish bass player, two members who live in the Czech Republic and two members who live in America. We have a shared belief, very similar tastes and inspiration can come from anything: nature, music, filmography, a lot of heartfelt emotions and they're based on our place in the world, our belief systems, our influences. Obviously it has a very gothic element to it, because we're all big fans of the gothic aesthetic. Yes, it's dark because that's the nature of the band but we're as prolific as someone like Moonspell, for example. You look back at their repertoire and “Sin/Pecado” is very different from “Wolfheart” or any of their other records. They have always progressed… I mean, they did the whole symphonic album about the earthquake very much different to “The butterfly effect”, for example, which was based on a novel. Yeah, they're constantly evolving and making great records, you know? They were Gothic metal at one point, then they hardened up, they've tried all different things and the same applies to Cradle of Filth. We see them as our Lusitanian Brothers, our Wolf Brothers, you know? I guess our paths have a similar trajectory over the years and, if anything, they're probably the band that we've toured with over the years more than anybody else, so I thought it was a good reference since you’re Portuguese. We're brothers with them!
M.I. - You are more experienced, older and wiser and I think things probably just come easier and you probably just don't get so much stress!
I wouldn't say it was easy writing any record… I think it's harder nowadays, because when we started we were very unique in respect of our stance, our outlook. Obviously we had elements of various different other bands that came before us, but now there's been a lot of people that have followed in our footsteps, there's considerably more different genres… I don't even know the amount of genres there are now! There's so much especially after the pandemic, when everybody suddenly realized “yes, we can continue doing our jobs now” and then suddenly you had all this massive amount of records that were written during people's time at home and people eager to get back out on the road. It's also very difficult now because this is album 14 and that doesn't include two EPS, live records, best of, bonus material. We understand our own path and we stick to it but, obviously, bearing that in mind, we also have a criteria which is at the essence of how we make our music, we wouldn't suddenly throw in a very deep reggae section, it's just not in our nature. We have lots of elements, we have traditional heavy metal, we have sound track, we have classical music, death, black, grind, you know? Cradle always cherry-picked amongst lots of different musical styles and we’ve become a hybrid or Chimera of those various musical attributes but, at the core, our fans expect a Cradle of Filth record. They expect experimentation, yes, but they don't expect so much so that it's unfathomable that they’d say “Oh I don’t believe this is Cradle of Filth! What are they doing?”. So, there are parameters… although we do just follow our own footsteps, we also have to have one eye not only on the past but also on our fandom.
M.I. - Maybe that's why the gap between albums is increasing slowly?! It used to be two years.
Well, that's because the pandemic got in the way and it delayed one album to three and a half years and we decided to release a remix version of “Cruelty and the Beast” which was a considerable amount of work and then a live record, a double live record with two new tracks and then there's been other little projects along the way, collaborations with the Ed Sheeran song. We began recording this new album in June 2023 but we went straight from recording part of it into summer festivals, then we took our annual two weeks holiday, because people have families and it's a way to decompress and rehabilitate, refresh and then we were away for eight weeks, then a couple of weeks more recording, then our producer had a baby, took us up to Christmas, then we recorded for about another six weeks, then went on tour for a month, so yeah there's been things!! The next record will come a lot quicker now that we have a stable lineup… getting even more stable now because Zoe, our keyboardist, is marrying our guitarist. We have new, I say new management but we've had new management now for about five years, but we've got to the point now where everything is very well oiled up, we have a lot of good people working for us, we are slightly a bit more mature, so we got to the stage as a band where we can pick and choose what we want to do and we don't necessarily have to take all the tours that are offered to us.
M.I. - What character inspired you this time around? Is it a conceptual album?
No, no, no! I mean, it has a loose concept as most of our albums do, “Midian” being one of them, but people regard that as a concept record as well. Conceptual, yes, in a certain respect but not chronologically conceptual like “Cruelty” or “Darkly Darkly” or “Godspeed” or “Damnation”, that's not to say we won't do that in the future but, at the present, we're quite comfortable writing albums that are not quite as convoluted. We're concentrating on writing lots of very, very catchy songs and, when I say catchy, it doesn't necessarily mean that they’re light-hearted, they're heavy, very fast, some of them are very intricate, some are not, some are more simplistic, but with this new lineup we've been concentrating on writing the best songs that we can. When you write a concept record, you're held back a little by the concept because everything has to fit in its place, it's like a story with chapters and sometimes it's hard to make the story believable and understandable without making it complicated. When you do full concept records, everybody expects you to be doing another one, much like King Diamond.
M.I. - You are a perfectionist who wants every album to be perfect, but how can you manage that if you guys don’t stop for a minute? How is it possible to write an album with such a full agenda?
I mean, it's varied. Usually I may get some ideas of where we want the song to go but, generally, I don't write lyrics until we're happy with the song structure. It's just the way I do it, it's easier for me, it's easier for the musicians, not saying that it doesn't then work in the reverse. If we get two or three songs and we're starting to get a theme and a colour to the album, then I may revisit the songs and say “guys, I want to move this, I want to change this, I want to replace that” and that sort of experimentation also goes as far as the studio as well. We may be in the studio and change some songs that we've had pretty much written as gospel for the last 12 months. The whole process is about making things better and better and we do take quite a while in the studio and that's because we want to seek perfection, we want to come out of there really happy. With the mix, you'll get a standard mix, you'll go away, you'll live with it, you'll come back and go “I've made notes! This needs to change! This needs changing!” and the producer will be like “you know what?! I want to clean this guitar up a bit! I want to roll this, alter some of the balances, this is conflicting with this, we need to strip some of the keys or we need more keys here”! It's a complicated process, probably one that can be done by AI in five minutes but if you're a real musician, a real person with real aspirations and ideas, you want to write a good album, not just something that's thrown away, then you spend time on it, it's nurtured so…
M.I. - Does AI scare you somehow?
It does! It terrifies me! My friend is a computer programmer, very top end, writes code for computer games and he showed me a program where you can just have a song in five minutes by saying what sort of style you want, what kind of theme, what kind of lyrics, how the band looks and that's not just music, that applies to everything in life, it's replacing the Arts very quickly. People could spend a year painting an oil painting and AI can do it literally within a few minutes, but it's soulless, you know?! It is regurgitation because, essentially, all it's doing is searching the worldwide web and taking minuscule parts of lots of things like code and recreate so…
M.I. - Well, Dani, many thanks for your time! Want to share a final message to the fans that will be attending the concert in Lisbon?
Yeah, it's going to be an incredible show, it always is! We got a great lineup, it's very diverse,
it's very theatrical, very cinematic, we've got a great stage show, great stage presence, great crew, great lights, great set list! We haven't come back to Portugal as much as we've wanted to! I believe the last couple of times we played there have not been club gigs, we did festivals. Lisbon holds a place dear to our hearts as it was the home of the second ever show we played in Portugal. We closed down or they closed down the Virgin Music store, that used to be in the town square or whatever ages ago, so we could do a signing there and we spent time eating food there, enjoying ourselves on holidays and staying with Moonspell. I mean, Lisbon is a very profoundly important place for us and it's somewhere we haven't been to enough, so it makes it even more special! Of course, it's a long drive as well, we're not flying in, we're on the tour bus, so it just makes it all the more important, it's one of those gigs along the way that you go “God! Lisbon's coming up in a few days” and you get very excited about it. We know the show is going to be well, it's close to sellout now, so we’re very much looking forward to coming back, playing for our fans, meeting friends and just having a great time!
M.I. - And you could play in Porto as well!!
We could but we only go by what our booking agent books and if he says we couldn’t do Porto this time, the venues were not available, then that's what we have to believe, because obviously he wants to earn money, so he wants to put on gigs where they're available and if we're not playing in Porto, there'll be a reason for that, but it also leaves the opportunity to come back to Porto and play a gig, maybe next year!
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Questions by Sónia Fonseca
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