CRADLE OF FILTH Guitarist Hopes To Keep Band Going For Another '10 Or 15 Years'

Aaron Yoxheimer of The Morning Call recently conducted an interview with CRADLE OF FILTH guitarist Paul Allender. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

On being criticized by journalists in their homeland (England):

"I don't know how it is everywhere else, but in England the media love to build a band up and then smash them right down again. They built us up early on, then smashed us down, but we just kept getting bigger and bigger and they absolutely hated it.

"You can pick up any English music magazine and without fail there's always somebody writing an editorial just having a dig at us. At the end of the day, I don't mind, because it's free press."

On the band's popularity in the U.S.:

"It's slowly getting there. We'll see how it is when we come to the U.S. for touring. Since our last album (2004's 'Nymphetamine', which was nominated for the best metal performance Grammy Award),we have seen it go up, which is brilliant."

"We've got so many fans from so many different walks of life that there really isn't a typical one. We've got fans who like heavy metal in general. We've still got the Goths. We've got punk-rock kids into the new album ('Thornography'). We've even got people in business suits. There really isn't one type of fan."

On "Thornography", which was released last October:

"There's more thrash influence and it's got more guitar solos. We tried to get more into the whole (JUDAS PRIEST) Glenn Tipton/K.K. Downing sort of scenario, working with harmonies and stuff like that, but putting it in in a cool way, not just to have it in there.

"We don't like putting solos in for solos' sake. There has to be a place for it, and a lot of songs on this album were written with solos in mind. On the previous stuff it was just too busy; there's no need to put solos over single-note harmonies. It would just sound horrible. There has to be some solid rhythm tracks in order for the solos to sing."

On why CRADLE is playing at the Trocadero in Philadelphia, instead of a larger venue like the Electric Factory, where the band performed during its previous Philadelphia stops:

"The shows we do in Europe are too expensive to do in the States because the cost of shipping all the stuff over is more than we can afford. To be honest, we don't really earn anything out of touring. We just try to break even, and if we can't do that, then we're just cutting our faces off, really.

"To be fair, though, you've got a lot of American bands who — I don't want to say they sound the same — but in terms of production and the way songs are written, do sound similar. Plus, your country's so big that there's no need for Americans to get into anyone outside of the U.S., because there's bands popping up all the time. Having said that, now that a lot of European bands are getting bigger, a lot of American fans are starting to look outside their own shores, which is good. We know this because our record sales are up and our popularity (in America) is getting bigger."

On how long a band like CRADLE OF FILTH can last:

"I'm hoping we can get another 10 or 15 years out of this. It'd be bloody incredible, but of course I'll be about 50 then. But who knows. I'll keep pushing it and pushing it until it collapses."

Read the entire interview at www.popmatters.com.