Cradle To Enslave
"We’re all long beyond caring about people that just slag you off for absolutely no reason - these days we quite enjoy it actually.”
Cradle of Filth instantly moved the 'Going to Hell for listening' bar way the fuck off the scale with intense cover art, masturbating nun T-shirts and an aura of dark majesty. The band's first major release, The Principle Of Evil Made Flesh, under the label Cacophonous Records, reflected the dark sufferance pioneered by Nordic black metal bands with lashings of gothic romance and poetry. The album, though leaking dark femininity, was noticeably devoid of satanic references yet the album was thrown into the genre along with the second generation of Norwegian black metal and their modus operandi of church burnings, goats head and murder.
The band has long attempted to distance itself from Satanism directly, but fringe-dwelling psychofans would continue to bind the band up in controversy for the better part of a decade, with the members lacking the sufficient fucks to actively rebut the claims. Any study of the Cradle of Filth content revealed an immersion in the darker recesses of literature with a flair for the jilted romantics. The demonic personae of band members were reinforced with a series of intense video clips with dark theatrical concepts involving razorblades, hellspawn and the occasional vagina. To a fan familiar with the nature of extreme metal the clips provide tributes to companion genres in different mediums such as horror films and dark literature. To an innocent bystander however the video clips are horrendous output akin to a simultaneous mixture of shit and vomit seeping from the pores of the Dark Lord himself.
At this point the band's leader and principle namesake Dani Filth couldn't care less. He's been the subject of the 21st century's version of a witch hunt; trial-by-tabloid TV documentaries and abuse from conservative sectors for more than two decades. “It's strange because not a lot of things get as much critique as the extreme metal scene,” reflects Filth, from his home in the pleasant countryside county of Suffolk, about 86 miles to the north east of London. “I don't know why that is, but I think in today's environment and culture where you've got a lot of guys sitting behind their computer it's very easy to judge people and criticise them and come up with comments and stuff - it happens all the time. People are bored and haven't really got much of a life so I don't take criticism to heart any more. I appreciate it if it's on the right track and I go 'Well yeah, that's obvious' and we'll take notice of it but generally over the years with a band as loved and reviled as Cradle of Filth it's all been very forced and black or white - you either love us or absolutely hate us so it's really easy to decide between the two and just ignore really. We're all long beyond caring about people that just slag you off for absolutely no reason - these days we quite enjoy it actually.”
It has long been a suspicion that Cradle of Filth played the extreme card as a form of a gimmick to further the lifespan of the band. However, after 22 years of dedication to the form and numerous excellent albums the band has shown that their fundamental substance resides in the dark corner of the metal world. Hailing from Britain the band filled a vacuum in metal that followed the extreme mass of world-conquering countrymen Iron Maiden. Mention of the Irons sparks an enthusiastic conversation of mutual fanboyism. “It's cool that we had a band like them around to grow up watching. I've since met Bruce on many occasions, had to take over his radio show a few times. We've had the pleasure of supporting Iron Maiden on a few occasions, getting up on stage a few times and filling in the choruses of a few tracks – Heaven Can Wait for one. Awesome, absolutely awesome. It was great watching them growing up - I've always been a massive fan and they are still one of my main influences.”
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It was about at this point that Dani Filth transformed from demonic icon to regular guy with an interesting job. “It is a job and it's a lot of work.” laments Filth. “When people ask me about recommendations or advice I can give to up and coming bands it is really about having one hundred and ten per cent dedication to all aspects of a band. It's not something you can just flip into because it's just such a cutthroat environment. There's so many people and so many bands recording albums in their bedrooms and stuff that you've got a wall of competition from the word go really. Anything less and you're doomed to mediocrity, which in some ways is worse than failure.”
If the secret to Cradle of Filth's immense success despite all odds seem rather pedestrian it is due to Dani's intelligence and resilience that the band has managed to outlast the rise and fall of trends in metal. The darkest rumour to befall Dani's ability to perform was without a doubt the rumour he had blown out his voice and was a shadow of his former self, a tale that has persisted as a commonplace in metal circles for over a decade. “It's just rubbish. It's people talking and it's absolute rubbish.” refutes Filth. “In fact I'm one of the few people that see a special throat doctor who specialises in stretching and massaging and stuff because the throat is a muscle you see, so you do damage it in much the same way as people get tennis elbow from overuse. There was one point where I was struggling a little bit because of that very thing - a voice strain - but as far as I'm aware unless you sing like Paul Young, where you sing below your actual vocal chords, which is very damaging, it's a complete myth about destroying your voice. Your voice will change as you get older - it will become lower. That's just natural and the only way to combat that is to become a eunich and I'm not really going to go down that avenue just yet. So yeah, I see this very good doctor that does all these stretches and that and these days the voice is more sort of pliable than ever! So when people say 'You've lost your voice' what they actually means is that you've got a mind of your own and you're actually changing your style to suit what you want to do. I mean, I don't want to screech like an injured rabbit the rest of my life and Cradle of Filth want to move on and explore different things. You'll see that the high stuff and the screechy stuff is still there when you come to see the show because we'll be playing quite a selection of stuff, from Dusk... And Her Embrace and Cruelty And The Beast - stuff people will be chuffed to see.”
Cradle Of Filth will be playing the following dates:
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