With a fourteenth studio album set for 2025, Cradle Of Filth will bring the new song Malignant Perfection to the stage tonight in London for a Halloween show that befits our Gig Of The Week. The By Order Of The Dragon show tonight is, as Dani Filth told us, set to represent “an amalgam of our whole back catalogue.”
A Grammy nomination and mention of being the “most successful British Metal band since Iron Maiden” by at least one magazine have followed Dani Filth around. The Suffolk connection will be enhanced by the release of a song with Ed Sheeran, and the future for Cradle Of Filth looks bright.
“I think the pandemic was a bit of a reboot for everybody,” Dani told MetalTalk. “Most fans realised they had a good thing going. Some people dropped by the wayside. They suddenly realised, look, I can’t afford to do this anymore. I can’t afford to pay thousands for US Visas or petrol tripled, [tour] bus prices have increased. Digital payments are fucking minimal, to say the least. So, a lot of people dropped by the wayside.
“But other people have said this is a reboot, and we’re still into it. In fact, I can’t see us slowing down any time in the near future. If anything, I think we will be speeding up.
“The pandemic put a delay on our last full-length studio album, Existence Is Futile. Between that and this new album, we had a double live record. We’ve been touring a lot to catch up. So, for example, this last record took us a year to record because we would be doing a couple of weeks here, going away on tour, a month here, going away on tour, Christmas. Then, the producer had a baby. So a few more weeks and then back on tour.
“It’s all done and dusted, and it’s ready to go. The first single, Malignant Perfection, is the first of three maybe four singles.”
The pandemic break invigorated Cradle Of Filth. They managed to tour the US at the tail end of the pandemic with all the testing and rules in place, and while some support may have contracted Covid, Dani and the team got through.
Donny Burbage, guitar, and Zoe Marie Federoff, keyboards and vocals, joined in 2022. “It was difficult,” Dani says, “but we broke through the other side, and it was a bit of a rejuvenation.”
The collaboration song with Ed Sheeran has been done and dusted for two years, Dani says. “We will release it in our own time. We didn’t want to release it back then because we had other plans, and he had other plans. We just gotta fit it around his releases and our releases.
“We didn’t want to make too much of a meal of it. Because obviously, we didn’t want it to overshadow our new album. But it’s a great song. Sounds fantastic, in fact.
“It’s what everybody would expect. It sounds like Ed Sheeran’s acoustic guitar, him singing. But it also sounds like Cradle Of Filth, blast beats and screaming. To be fair, Ed actually does push himself quite rockily in it.”
Dani says that only a few people have heard it. “But they love it.”
The relationship goes back to when a young Sheeran was down for work experience at a studio that Cradle Of Filth were rehearsing at. “I don’t know what happened,” Dani says, “but he ended up not going to the studio. He ended up working at the local council. He said that he has got me to thank really for his career because he decided, having done that, he was never gonna get a fucking normal job because it was so fucking boring.”
Sheeran has said he grew up listening to Slipknot and Cradle Of Filth. “He came with no fanfare to the studio,” Dani says. “There was no bodyguards, no entourage, no press. He just came on his own in his wife’s car, guitar slung over his shoulder and Cradle Of Filth hoodie on. We had a very down-to-earth day and then went out to the pub for a pint and some food.”
Sheerhan and Filth had a great day, sharing anecdotes, and still keep in touch. “We’ve [Cradle Of Filth] have done a few collaborations,” Dani says, “and I like the marriage of extremes. I did one with Bring Me The Horizon.. Twisted … Motionless In White.. The 69 Eyes.
“More recently, we did something that was a bit more controversial. Well, it’s not controversial; it’s just that some people would take umbrage at the fact that we worked with a massive fashion house called Vetements. But then we also did that with Drop Dead as well, which is Oli Sykes’s label.”
Vetements are designing Dani a one off at the moment. “I think it’s pretty cool because an Extreme Metal band from Suffolk is out there, being worn by the likes of.. at the same fashion show. But Hadid [Gigi] and whatever her name is, this fashion company is huge. The Kardashians were there, and the usual fanfare.
“I like the fact that sometimes we push our fingers very much into the mainstream into places where they should not really be. The way it riles some people. Other people are like, wow, this is fucking brilliant. Because it just brings a little bit of that otherworldly stardust and glamour and shines a light on a scene that sometimes has been too much up his own ass.”
I suggest it’s a similar situation to the Stranger Things situation, where they use a Metallica song and then suddenly everyone’s in Metallica shirts. “The only people that don’t benefit from that are the people who are seen as their own personal little spawning pond. I had friends growing up that as soon as you got into any of the bands they liked, they would be like, oh, no, I can’t bear to be into those anymore. They sold out after their first demo, you know, that idiot.
“It doesn’t matter how extreme they were. Growing up, we were really into obscure Thrash Metal. But it can only be good for everyone and if people get into the music, you can’t take that away from people. You either like it or you don’t.”
Trouble And Their Double Lives, their first live album in 20 years, was released in 2023. “It was desperately needed,” Dani says. “We had recorded some bits and pieces whilst we were out on a world tour. We also wanted to air some new material, but couldn’t do it really for a new album. So it just came at a perfect time.
“I had this title Trouble And Their Double Lives kicking around, and obviously, that wasn’t going to be for a single record. Cos it’s in the title. It just worked perfectly. I think it was apt. We had just moved to Napalm Records at the time, and, obviously having signed to them, they didn’t want to wait two years for a new album. So it ticked all the right boxes in all the right departments.”
Maybe in an alternate universe, where there was no pandemic, it would be another 20 years before it surfaced.
It turns out the sound engineer, unbeknown to the band, had recorded lots of the shows on the World Tour. “We just listened back to a load of it and went, wow, this is pretty good,” Dani says.
With two live records already, the difficulty in picking the album setlist covered several challenges. “We had to pick stuff that gave people a varied picture of the band, encapsulated what we were about, and filled in the gaps,” Dani said. “People liek to hear old stuff, they want to hear new stuff. They wanna hear stuff like Nymphetamine era or Thornography or Damnation. It was a very difficult job so it could only be done over two sides.
“But again, we also felt like we wanted to put something new on each side for any new fans coming along and also for all the fans who said we wanna hear something else. I think we ticked all the boxes in that department. The record company were happy, and it seems to have gone down well.”
The lyrics in Cradle Of Filth songs often explore dark themes with the influence of literature. “The music inspires us,” Dani says, “and inspiration can come from anything. Nature, films, literature, everyday experiences.
“It’s like it just comes to me. Shaped by the music, each song dictates a sort of certain narrative. We’ve done plenty of, well, four actually, but some people consider other albums like Midian as being conceptual. As conceptual as most concept records, I guess. But four that run as storylines. You have Cruelty And The Beast, Damnation And A Day, Godspeed On The Devil’s Thunder and Darkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa. So I guess people look to us a bit like King Diamond as, oh yeah, they’re gonna be doing another concept record.
“The new album is a concept record. I mean, it’s conceptual, but it doesn’t run concurrently. That’s because we wanted to make very catchy songs that can be fucking super fast, super heavy or an amalgam of both. But they’ve gotta be memorable.
“Sometimes when you write something that is supposed to be chapters and runs concurrently, an A to Z, the music suffers a little bit because you’re trying to fill the gaps and make a story fluid without being what happened there, then? Song five, and I’ve got no idea how we got to it.
“Sometimes, because of that, some of the songs become more like bridges than they do actual songs. Then you’re always trying to fit… It’s just very difficult. For a few records, we really wanted to just go out there and make really great catchy songs.”
What are Dani’s tips for touring as a band? “Don’t be a c*nt. Always take dark sunglasses. That’s gonna be, first and foremost, above everything.
“Be very respectful of people. Keep the bus tidy, keep it stocked. People can party if they want. I don’t drink anymore, but people, the band, can party whenever they want as long as it doesn’t affect any of the shows.
“We get along really well. We do a lot of sightseeing together and hang out together. If we get a rare time when we’re having hotels on the tour, when we come off the tour bus, we generally just all scarper into our dark corners like spiders and then re-emerge for a meal or a bit of sightseeing.
“If we have a day off, we try and do something exciting, like visit a theme park, which we’ve done plenty of times or something unusual. Camp or have a barbecue. We try to keep it very family-orientated on the road.
“We’re actually sharing a huge tour bus this time with Butcher Babies, which is about only the third time we’ve ever shared a bus with anybody. You gotta be super respectful of those people. Keep the place tidy, keep your own sort of area. Don’t fill the fridge up with shit.
“Be super respectful of the fans. Just have a great time. Don’t bring anybody down, and just try and make it fun and easy for everybody involved. That includes our legendary Crew de la Filth as well. It’s not just about the band. It’s about the whole entourage as a family. These are our friends as well as our compatriots.”
My final question was to ask if Jesus really was a c*nt.
“Well, I think he was a fictional c*nt,” Dani says. “Discussing the whole thing about whether he was born, why was 25 December chosen? And, of course, the Romans chose it to pacify people that were still worshipping the old gods. So the pagan festival of Saturn, et cetera, et cetera.
“So it would be more acceptable to become Christian and be able to celebrate at that point and take over all the sort of things like trinkets and baubles and what have you. Rumour has it he was actually born in spring hence why there’s a nativity scene and newborn lambs, which would make sense.
“No, I don’t believe he was a c*nt at all. To be honest, I think he’s probably fictional. Definitely fictional. I mean, blonde, fair-skinned, blue-eyed. These redneck Americans who say we hate the fucking Middle East and yet that Middle Eastern deity.
“He probably was a real person. He probably was a very nice person. Probably was a damn good carpenter. But the rest of it? Fictional.”
I feel like, perhaps, that should be a new shirt saying, ‘Jesus was a damn good carpenter.’
Cradle Of Filth will be at O2 Forum Kentish Town tonight. See you at the bar.
