DANI FILTH Still Has CRADLE OF FILTH Playing By Its Own Rules: 'We're A Black Metal Band. We Do What We Want'

By David E. Gehlke

It's not beyond the realm of possibility that U.K. extreme metal veterans CRADLE OF FILTH will release another studio album (or two) before their long-awaited collaboration with pop star Ed Sheeran finally sees the light of day. Their now-delayed mash-up with Sheeran symbolizes the band's relationship with the mainstream: CRADLE OF FILTH is somehow always lingering around but has never been fully embraced. It's a double-edged sword that founder and frontman Dani Filth appears comfortable with after a stint on a major label in the early 2000s, along with some appearances on MTV and, more recently, a collaboration with clothing brand Vetements. All the while, CRADLE has maintained its edge across now 17 studio albums and a myriad of EPs and live releases.

In the present moment, CRADLE has a new effort, "The Screaming Of The Valkyries" to promote. The LP draws a significant yet not overwhelming influence from the band's pivotal works, "Dusk And Her Embrace" and "Cruelty And The Beast", while maintaining their well-integrated, if not seamless, fusion of black, death, and goth metal along with the ever-pleasing twin guitar harmonies. As CRADLE has shown over nearly 35 years of existence, a lineup change (or two) is typically beneficial, a sentiment that was on Dani Filth's mind when he connected with BLABBERMOUTH.NET.

Blabbermouth: How much of the direction on "The Screaming Of The Valkyries" can be attributed to leaning into "Dusk And Her Embrace" and "Cruelty And The Beast" of late?

Dani: "I don't believe there was any clear intention behind it. It came as part and parcel of writing a new record — self-plagiarism, if you will. I mean, AC/DC has made a career out of it. It's a bit of self-plagiarism, attributed to the fact that we have two new members now, three years later. Before you ask, everything is going very well. In fact, one of the new members, Zoe [Marie Federoff, keyboards], got married to Ashok [Marek Šmerda, guitar]. But, yeah. I'd say that when they joined, they were sought after because we found ourselves in a delicate predicament after our previous guitarist left for family life. He was moving from one part of the country to another and just had a child. Our keyboardist, who joined the band for an album but didn't contribute much, didn't think it was for her and used that opportunity to leave as well. This happened four or five weeks before we were set to be a special guest for DANZIG. We really didn't want to miss that. So, we brought in two new people. While they were being scouted, part of the modus operandi was to find individuals who were into CRADLE and understood what we were about. Hence, after that tour, it wasn't like, 'Thanks for your services. See you later.' It was more like, 'Welcome to the family. You guys are perfect.' Their entry into CRADLE involved those albums, 'Dusk', 'Cruelty' and 'Midian'."

Blabbermouth: Along those lines, you've continued to refine your vocals. There's less shrieking and perhaps more enunciation now.

Dani: "Over the years, you see what's good, what isn't, what you're capable of and obviously, with this band, it's become a trademark, the screams. But you can't replicate an album. Tom Araya [SLAYER] said this ages ago about 'Reign In Blood'. I can't remember the specifics, but the gist is that 'An album is circumstance of the time. Everything around it. The people you're hanging out with. The music. The cinema.' There are a million criteria that made that record. To try and reproduce that inorganically, as in forcefully doing it without letting the music take control, would make it a bit contrived, like 'I'm having to do this.' If you're a band forging your own identity and are strong like SLAYER, you just don't do those things. You don't become contrived. You don't try to make records sound the way people want them to sound.

"Going back to the vocals. Those albums are the sum of their parts. Back then, it was a lot different. I was a lot younger. There was a different style, almost. We've matured as a band. The modus operandi for this record was to make a really catchy record, whether it's extreme or not. You can be catchy and still have blast beats. That was the idea. That was the idea going forward anyway: We are an extreme band, but people understood the words. That's more difficult than anything else, being extreme and verbose, so people understand exactly what's going on. Yeah, obviously, people still expect the high screams. You've got plenty of those. I just do whatever it takes to make the songs sound good. That's all you can do, isn't it? I am 52 this year."

Blabbermouth: The final scream on "When Misery Was A Stranger". You nailed that one. Are they still hard to hit?

Dani: "It's tricky, for sure. It's always been difficult. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it. I don't think anyone has approached it the same way. It's just one of those things. I originally modeled those screams after Kam Lee [MASSACRE, ex-DEATH] and Stace McLaren from RAZOR, and a bit, believe it or not, from Diamond Dave [David Lee Roth, VAN HALEN] back in the day. You notice the guy from RAZOR stopped doing his thing. It's one of those things that is very difficult to do, especially when you're hitting notes as well. I've been brushing up on that lately, getting back into music theory and stuff like that. Generally, screams are in the key of E or whatever they happen to be. [Laughs] It's not overly complicated. I still perform it live every day for an hour and a half or three quarters of an hour. It was never easy. We toured with some deathcore bands or whatever they call themselves—I'm not sure what the genre is called. I guess they're along the lines of SLAUGHTER TO PREVAIL. They do all the pig vocals. People do it so quietly. One, I'm totally amazed. I was like, 'Wow, that's freaking awesome.' I was so surprised at how quietly these people do it. When I go for it, maybe I got it wrong from the start, but I always just dive in."

Blabbermouth: On "White Hellebore", you have Zoe doing clean vocals in the chorus. Is the temptation always there to write more songs in that vein?

Dani: "Doing that can feel contrived. For instance, when we were on Roadrunner and had massive success with 'Nymphetamine', particularly with the title track and video featuring Liv Kristine, we sold over 800,000 records. They were like, 'Hmmm. We need another hit like that!' That's been the bane of our existence. It would be so easy to make every single song have a duet in the chorus, but that's not who we are. Also, we write songs for ourselves; we've never written songs just to fill an order. It's not a shopping list. Maybe that's how other people approach it. If it were a shopping list, we'd have a lot more money! We try to stay true to ourselves and our sound. Sure, it would be easy to create something super catchy. Anyone could do that. NAPALM DEATH could add scratch beats and throw in a rap section. There are things you can do to enhance your standing with current fans or the prevailing music culture, but that's not our approach. Only now are we starting to gain recognition from some in the black metal community who once said we sucked and sold out the scene, claiming we weren't true to the genre. Thirty years later, we're still here. Now they're talking about us touring with DISSECTION and EMPEROR and about me being pen pals with [MAYHEM founder] Euronymous [real name: Øystein Aarseth], as if it's something new. Back in the day, they labeled us as un-true."

Blabbermouth: Black metal and its rulebook never seemed to warm to you around that time.

Dani: "It's always the fans; it was never the bands. I'm still friendly with many people in those bands. The purists are like, 'You sold out after your first rehearsal tape.'"

Blabbermouth: Who's the big driver behind the twin guitar melodies? You?

Dani: "I may have been at some point. We've been very prolific of late. We've got good people in the band. It took a while. This is another thing about maturity: People say, 'It must be so hard being on tour getting older.' No, it gets easier. You're in control of the situation. You've been doing it for a long time. You're aware of the pitfalls. You have great people around you. We have great management with Dez [also of COAL CHAMBER and DEVILDRIVER] and Anahstasia Fafara. They're friends before management. We've got a good crew, good band. The band wants to write. The band is writing for another album at the moment, but don't get excited! It's our job. What better time to write before a new album comes out than when you're in the honeymoon period? I put that down to having very good, prolific writers. Yeah, even though it is getting less and less British. [Laughs] There's only two of us at the moment. We have Czech guys. We call them the 'Czech-mates' and the two Americans. Back in the day, that would have signed our death-knell, as it did with VENOM when they got two Americans. Nowadays, with intercontinental travel and everything, it doesn't really matter. They've really brought something to the table. Having two guitarists, despite having Americans in the band, we're having the baton passed down to us from MAIDEN, THIN LIZZY, PRIEST, and they're still prolific. My mate, Andy Sneap, is in the band and produced the last two PRIEST albums, which are fantastic. They sound like they are on edge."

Blabbermouth: While on the topic of America, was the hoopla surrounding your first visits here overblown, or was it really that crazy?

Dani: "It took a while over there. It's the final frontier. Everyone wants to get to America. It's new horizons, new possibilities, so when we finally got there, we did one show at the Milwaukee Metalfest. That would have been 1997. It was on my birthday, in fact. That went down well. We came down for a showcase for four days. Every place we played, everybody came out. L.A. was crazy. Nicolas Cage, his son, and his family were there. I eventually spoke to him on the phone later in our career. I've been friends with his son, Weston. [Glenn] Danzig came with his entourage. Zeena LeVay [daughter of Church Of Satan founder, Anton LeVay] and her entourage. Nikolas Schreck [who was married to Zeena LeVay at the time] and his entourage. A dozen bands came out of the woodwork to see us. I was like, 'Oh my god, this is great!' I was hanging out with Jeff Becerra [POSSESSED]. In New York, Danny Lilker [ANTHRAX, NUCLEAR ASSAULT, S.O.D]. I'd have to ring him up and talk to his mom, god bless her. She was like, 'Danny's out at the moment, and I'll pass the message along.' Yeah, it was a real eye-opener. We grew up with these people. Danzig is the ultimate royalty for me. I was such a fan of the MISFITS, SAMHAIN and DANZIG, and to have him come out and check us out was incredible. People were like, 'We've got a living, breathing European black metal band here in our midst. Let's go poke them with a stick and see if they move.'"

Blabbermouth: What's going through your head when all of this is happening?

Dani: "We were quite collectively, despite the crazy pace that we had, especially on that tour, it was fucking mental. Looking back on it, I'm like, 'How did we do it?' I hear stories about the '70s and the shit they got up to then, and the '80s, but the early '90s, similar things we did were beggar's belief. I ask, 'How are we not in prison? How are we not dead?' For the most part, artistically, at that point, we really had our heads on. That was because three years before, three members of our band split right in the middle. Half of us went with one manager; half went with the other. That lot went and formed a new band. The rest of us were stuck with our fledgling record company. We were in court for a year. We had no exit road at all. It looked like it was curtains for us. To get over that, much like the pandemic has done recently to a lot of people, it has given them some rejuvenation. They're going, 'You know what? My life in a band wasn't bad. I was moaning about it before. I thought it was never going to tour again. I've fallen in love with it again.' I know that. There are a lot of people in the music industry who left and found they could get a better job. Instead, they are going, 'I love what I do. I'm going to double down my efforts.' This is what it was like back in the day. Taking a record company to court with no clear sign of it ever ending. We were living on the breadline for a year. After that, we became quite astute and quite prolific in our working mechanisms as a band."

Blabbermouth: Have you been comfortable with CRADLE sometimes dipping its toes in the mainstream? It's been happening with the Ed Sheeran collaboration and a few other times in the past.

Dani: "To be honest, if you're going to label us, we're an extreme metal band. At times, we hold extreme viewpoints. When I say 'extreme,' I don't mean it relates to politics and racism. We've dabbled with the occult; we've done the Jesus shirt. We're not saints, let's put it that way, by any stretch of the imagination. From the very beginning, I've had this vision that if people can embrace films like 'Nosferatu', 'Bram Stoker's Dracula', or the 'Alien' franchise — horror movies that millions enjoy — there's no reason why the majority who think music ends with Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, because that's all they're force-fed, can't open up. I'm talking about the folks who work in delis or on construction sites—they have the radio on, and that's all they hear. If they heard some of the things that other bands have done, like DYING FETUS or even METALLICA, who are entry-level to metal, they might hear it and think, 'Fucking hell. This is my jam.' That's what happened to me when I was a kid. When I heard SLAYER in '85, that was it. I was hooked. Then there were VENOM, MERCYFUL FATE, MAIDEN, OZZY. That's how I see music. Sure, you can break into the mainstream. More recently, we had a clothing capsule with Vetements, a massive fashion house. They're launching a whole range of CRADLE stuff. Some people are like, 'Isn't that a sell-out?' I'm like, 'Fuck off. It's completely the opposite.' It's not a sell-out at all. It's something no one else has done. So what? At the end of the day, we're still a black metal band. When people create demons, they can't expect them to be neatly locked up in a box with a ribbon on it. They think, 'Oh my god. You can't do that. Oh no. You can't do that. You can't sell records. You can't go on the road and do this. You can't collaborate with a fashion brand.' We're like, 'Fuck off. We're a black metal band. We do what we want. Don't complain when we live by our own rules."

Dani Filth press photo courtesy of Napalm Records