Cradle of Filth : Return of the Bleeding Crew…
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‘Thornography’ is the title of the new COF album, after the hugely successful ‘Nymphetamine’ in 2OO5. Produced once again by Rob Caggiano, Anthrax guitarist but also producer of Bleeding Through’s great last LP, this record showcases a wider spectrum of the ambitions of the band today, catchy and more straight-to-the-point, heavier and more aggressive (Maiden and Priest are looming) and less concept-orientated than before. Paul Allender talks about all that, members change, song atmospheres, strong influences and the state of mind of this one-of-a-kind avatar of black metal in UK, in its theatrical form anyway.
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| -Last time we met, (last time I met Cradle, I talked to former guitarist James McEllroy in 2OO5), it was for ‘Damnation and the Day’, for Sony Music. Today is your second album for Roadrunner: I suppose then that you’re quite happy with the situation?
-P: Yes, we are very happy with Roadrunner: it’s nice to be on a label which understands the music and the whole metal scene. It’s more than twenty years now that they are devoted to metal bands. It was good to be on signed on Sony for ‘Damnation and a day’, but, unfortunately, they didn’t understand the band, they didn’t know what to do with it, so it’s good to be here, and especially on International Roadrunner, as the band and as any other band, we need to be diffused in America as well as in Europe: They spread us absolutely everywhere, it’s amazing! -Members of COF come and go: you must be tired of being asked why, but, when you think of it, isn’t it a good thing because they bring new blood each time? -P: Yes I suppose it is. On previous albums, there has been numerous members changing, but on this album, ‘Thornography’, I provided like pretty much eighty per cent of the whole album, this is the first time of, because I absolutely love to write music, and, when I’m doing that, I’m not sitting and writing riffs, I write whole arrangements as well. And, because I do that, my arrangements get used, for an album for example, and this is what happens this time now. When I’m home, in my studio, I sit and write arrangements and it happen it has been used this time! I’m not saying everything I do is fine, because most of it stays inside, but always make sure the rest of the band puts his influence as well, because it’s nothing worst than actually having a band sounding like one person. This one sounds all collective, it has to, and I think pretty much even if nobody was never leaving, I don’t think it wouldn’t change dramatically anyhow, because on this album is a big stamp of me, with all the styles I’m into. It could be a good or a bad thing, but who knows? -Do you have a permanent keyboard player this time? -P: We have a live keyboard player, her name is Rosie, and she plays keyboards for us live. She didn’t do much writing on this album because she came into to the band pretty on the half on the writing process. We used a guy called Daniel Priestley to do the orchestrations, the same that did the orchestrations for ‘Damnation and a day’, with all keyboards and choirs. There’s another guy called Mark Newby-Robson, our personal designer, we knew him for awhile, even before we did ‘Median’, it was between keyboard players. This guy, Mark, helped us out for a few gigs and stuff. Then he came along the studio and played some of the stuff he had written and so he put some of his ideas into it as well. There’s a guy called Chris, who wrote the intro of the album. He’s from the United States and he came soon with some of the samples you can hear on the new album, so it sounds as if we used four keyboard players! -Talking about this intro, it made me think, when I heard it, of the Dany Elman’s music… -P: Yes, this is what we wanted. I like soundtracks, without being obsessed with it Particular mood for writing, I listen to the music and many riffs of guitar comes when I listen to it. I really like the X-men soundtrack, the second movie, and ‘Planet of the Apes’ soundtrack, I really like it because it’s different, it sounds different to a normal soundtrack, and that’s incredible. -Let’s talk about Rob Cagianno, who produced once again your album: he is essential for the sound of Cradle today? -P: No! Wes used Rob last time and as asked him to work on this album, but I think I’m think next time we’ll try to have somebody different, because I don’t want the band to have the same sound over and over, which is boring. That’s because we don’t write songs differently on purpose, we just accept the way it have to come out. I think it’s time to change producers for the next album, but I don’t have any clue who that’s gonna be. To be fair, I liked Anthrax in the good old days. I heard some stuff recently, and to me it’s not typical good Anthrax. But I loved Anthrax before, it was brilliant, and nowadays, it’s not the same. Rob is a good guy, we met him when he mixed ‘Damnation and a Day’ and he stayed with us for two albums. -About trash, this year is the 20th anniversary of ‘Reign in Blood’, by Slayer: what do you think of it? -P: I love it, but the best album, for me, is ‘Hell Awaits’, sorry to shock everybody: the atmosphere in this one is amazing, and then ‘Haunted the Chapel’, two those are the best Slayer albums for me, even if everybody’s says ‘Reign in Blood’, which is a good album, but is far superior, as far as I’m concerned. -What do you think of the return of Venom and Celtic Frost this year? P: I heard Celtic Frost album but wasn’t convinced. I have always been a huge fan of both Celtic Frost and Venom, and I own each album, single and picture disc ever issued. Venom is cool, but Celtic Frost didn’t quite appeal to me, unfortunately! -This year, I met Liv Kristin, who told me she would appear on two videos of the band… -P: For one video, the second didn’t happen. -So, who sings on ‘Temptation’? -P: She’s a girl called Harry, we called her Dirty Harry and she’s the girlfriend of an American musician. We contacted her through Rob, who said we should call her because she would do it very well. I think she did great. Liv is an amazing singer, but we took the choice to choose somebody different, as all we do for each Cradle album, to keep everything different instead of having everything twice -For example, Ville Vallo, singing on ‘Byronic Man’… P: Basically, when we went in the States to play, we just started talking, as Dani spoked to Ville a few times on telephone and knows him quite well. He came to our ideas for the conclusions to get in order to sing on this particular song, so we sent the audio to him and Dani sent him the lyrics we wanted him to sing on, and I think he was on tour, when doing that, he came to a studio, did the vocals and then came back and it was great. I remember we exchanged some e-mails because he wasn’t so happy with the singing he made, he wanted to change. It sounded great to us, but he wanted to change things. Anyway he didn’t and it sounds amazing. -I noticed that there are more clear vocals on this album: is it the sign if an evolution for the band or just a try? Will you pursue in this direction? P: Pretty much. We’ve tried to do and create with this album is more memorable songs. I think we’ve come to a point, in our career and in our lives where that’s the sort of direction we’re going, because we’re all in our mid thirties now! We’re not kids anymore. But, on the next album, it could go back again to where it was, we don’t know, it depends on mood we’ll be at the time. To tell the truth, we’ve done quite some interviews now, and there’s a lot of people who said that if the first Cradle album that we put on and actually remember it for start to finish, all the way through. So it’s working, which is good! -On ‘Thornography’, you covered ‘Temptation’ by Heaven I7, a new wave eighties English band, after doing the same with Cliff Richard on ‘Damnation and a day’: why this choice? -P: To tell you the truth, we choose a cover that people least expect us to do, and this one came out really well. A lot of people asked us why we wouldn’t do a heavy metal cover, but it’s boring. Why not going to something really different? That’s what we’ve done! We did it because people would talk about us, and it’s working, everybody’s talking about Cradle covering Heaven 17, and that’s the best publicity, when people talk about the band. -What is the situation of the black metal scene in England today? Do you feel isolated? -P: There’s absolutely no black metal scene in England, it’s full of emo crap, which is absolutely bloody everywhere! You turn on a music channel, and there are just people with rockabilly outfit. I totally understand like if you start a band, if you start young, it doesn’t matter where you start. So it seems to be full of kids, but kids with really bad attitude! This attitude brings a lot of new bands very arrogant coming out, and, to tell the truth, I can’t wait until there’s actually real metal bands on TV again, because they did play really good metal stuff, but at two in the morning, and now the emo stuff comes during the day: what all is this about? It’s not metal, it’s just fashion you want to throw out of the window! I can understand why this situation, because the record companies are making a lot of money with it, but it’s not my musical taste, that’s it. -What do you think of bands such Akercocke, for example? P: A couple of songs are good, and we know them quite well, they supported us a few times, they are really good hard working guys. I like a couple of songs, the rest is too extreme for me: if I was like ten years younger, perhaps, it was into that stuff in early nineties, but now I’ve been back to heavy metal groups, like Destruction, that I really love, and Maiden, Megadeth, Motorhead: we played with them in Sweden, and it was incredible. Motorhead was quite an influence for me. , -Will we see videos for this album? In a special edition of the record? -P: Yes, we’ll already shot a video on 5th and 6th of September, for ‘Temptation’. This video gonna be really stylized. It sounds amazing on storyboard, and if the producer can put everything he’s thinking on the film, it’s gonna be incredible. We’re thinking in doing a special edition, but not before eight month time. This video is not offensive at all, so it’s gonna be on TV absolutely everywhere. -Isolated, but unique? P: I suppose we are…isolated. We must keep on heads on the scene, but we’re constantly changing, as a band, as musician writing, every album we played was just the best of our ability at the time. Now, when we listen back to the albums, the songs are written a while ago, we always think we could have changed things. But we wrote this stuff that was in our belly at the present time, and we know, like every band member, and we put ourselves I00% into it. And we really push ourselves; Rob was constantly pushing us to do it again and again, and it was for the best result. The reason why we put 100% into the album, the imagery, the artwork and everything is because our fans are really important to us, we don’t want to rip off any of pour fans, so everything has to be absolutely pristine perfect, so we can give to our fans what they expect from us, ‘cause we really respect the fans. Interview made in Paris on August 29th, 2006. Thanks to Sarah and Karine for their precious help.
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