CRADLE OF FILTH : VAMPIRE OF THE SUN

Meeting with Dani and Paul on a Sony afternoon. Ah ah ah..

-Here’s your new lp : ‘Damnation and a day’, the first for Sony Music : how did it happen and what does it bring to you ?

-Dani : When we finished with our previous record label, music for Nations, we basically prostituted ourselves amongst various music companies just to chase to best deal and fortunately Sony came along. After initial meeting with the managing director, we felt compare to take their offer, and it’s great because what brought to the band is the high level finance, so we are able, on this record, to integrate the Hungarian Philarmonic Radio Orchestra, which is, you know, a fair amount of money and something we wanted to achieve for a long while. And also, it enabled us to work with bigger names and spend a little more time on making sure that the album is ok. the finance, the distribution and the concept of security for once ; how it’s gonna work, but up the ladder.

-More freedom, too ?

-Dani : I think, yes. We would have expected them to be more restrictive, because they there’s a sort of policy about what sales and what doesn’t, but in fact there has been a considerable amount of more freedom. Because what interested me enough when we first signed to them, the managing director professed to me that he didn’t know anything about the music, all he knew what excitement about what we sold : he didn’t messed around and told us straight how it was, which I appreciated, cut the bullshit out !

-So, contractually as well as musically, it’s a turning point for the band ?

-Dani : I feel so, yes definitely

-A ritual question : another change of line up : don’t you feel like a captain in a tempest or is it there the real damnation for Cradle of filth ?

-Dani : It’s not really damnation : when you’re in a band and a year would pass, it more seems like an eternity in itself : Dave seems locked in the band for an eternity but he’s officially in the band for a year and a half, and yet it seems like a lot of time, because we end up doing so much : this year, for example, we’re on tour perpetually from march to december, on and off, in Europe and Australia and Japan and America, so you don’t really notice it as a band member, it's not so much a line-up change this time around, it's been streamlined. Guy has left the band, due to number of reasons, but the album was written as a five pieces, he didn’t contribute that much to it and it was subsequently recorded as five pieces as well, so at the moment we’re keeping it as a five pieces because it just works. There's not too many cooks to spoil the broth, it’s something that we’re gonna keep up for the mean time, however when we’ll venture out on the road, we’ll use a second guitarist but we’ll see how things goes with that character, will we integrate him to the band or will be have to find someone else. At the moment we are happy as a five piece : it’s enough to be creative as five people.

-It’s better to be less people but more motivated...

-Paul : Five is better than six, I guess !

-Talking about the production of this album, it’s yourselves and Doug Cook, and you’re teaming together for a long time now. But do you have dream producers you would like to work with ?

-Dani : We mixed with Scrap 60, which is a sort of mixing group in America, and one of the members, Rob Caggiano is guitarist of Anthrax, and that’s helped to get the heaviness on the guitar. If I had to pick someone, I would say Rick Rubin...

-Paul : And Andy Wallace for the mix : the classic pair !

- Dani : That would be a lot of money, I dare say.

- Paul : But I don't think they would put the level of commitment that we put.

-And someone like Pete Tagtgren, for example ?

-Dani : Pete’s a friend of mine, but, to be fair, I think he spreads himself a little thin from time to time, he’s a total workalcoholic ! He’s got dozen bands of his own, he’s constantly producing someone else. He would be perfect for interaction, but I’d like to put him in a bigger studio. I know he's familiar with his own tools, but he's done so many bands there. It doesn't stay fresh, so I'd like to bring him to a bigger studio environment.

-For ‘Damnation and a day’, you worked with a Hungarian chord orchestra and many chorists : why was it important to use them, instead of keyboards ? The sound ? The feeling ?

-Dani : The whole album has this biblical quality to it, to lyricism and the artwork. For example : if you’re making Star Wars, you wouldn’t try to play the theme tune on keyboards. Nothing is as effective, we’ve always tried to get that atmosphere, as we’re very soundtrack orientated, but there's no replacing it, especially on the scale of that size as well. It's a 60-piece orchestra and then during the mix it was doubled, so you got something akin to the soundtrack to the Lords of the rings, that big.

-No way to see this orchestra, or a part of it, on stage with you ?

-Dani : I think we could pretty end up using samples, I would be nice to do one.

-I’ve heard you recorded dogs too ?

-Dani : Dogs ? Well there was a part of the album where you just hear a lot of howling because the studio was situated between a hunting lodge, so they kept there all the hunting dogs from East Sussex hunts. So on a misty night, the howling were drifting across the building in a way quite evocative. It was also next to an old people's insane asylum.

-You wanted a narrator, too : who did you take finally ?

-Dani : Yes, we met him when we made the horror film, ‘Cradle of fear’, there’s a serial killer in there, the guy who plays him is called Dave McEwen and we decided to use him because he is very Shakespearian in his vocal range, much like Richard Burton or Orson Welles, great background himself.

-Do you compose and consider music differently since you re a father yourself ?

-Dani : It gives a little bit, if anything, more responsibility, because I’m not connected only to myself but I don’t think it has mellowed me out if anything, it gets me more ANGRY ! ! ! we juste came back from India which she loved, she set the turning point where she’s turning to a proper little girl, she can speak fluently, count, read, start to read, argue, have the right opinion about things, like something in the middle of the night, questions. I’m very proud, but it hadn’t affected so much, just been a little more careful about how things are handled, whereas before, I was a little bit more reckless, definitely more reckless !

-What are for you the main differences with the previous lp ? Heavier ?

-Dani : I think the production itself tend to heaviness, and also we dropped tunes by a couple of notes.

-Paul : The guitar drop tunes...

-Dani : And there’s lot more emphasis on patterns and chugging, when you got to remember that on some of the tracks, it’s blended with a full orchestra, it sounds epic because it’s an excellent drum sound as well, it has definitely best guitar sound, best drums sound, and that provides a nice solid backbone to the rest of the music. So that, in itself, I would say sounds heavier, definitely heavier, some of the songs in themselves are more death metal orientated, as others are more traditional metal. We’re so kind of exploring new grounds for Cradle of Filth, we're putting our own twist on that.

-You recorded a Cliff Richard cover : why this choice ?

-Dani : Well, it’s not actually on the album, but it will probably appear on a special edition which will come out about six months afterwards, along with some new songs. I guess we took a Cliff Richard track because we wanted something that we could pervert, and I think it’s ironic, the fact that Cradle of Filth covers Cliff Richard, and ironically, when we actually heard the song, we thought it was like we'd done an old AC/DC track, a lot heavier ! And the lyrics are quite cool, they're quite ambivalent. We also asked for King Diamond to sing on that as well, so there's a real total irony there, something that really works!

-Paul : But Cliff Richard didn’t show up !

-No ? Even on stage ?

-Both : No, not really !

-You have fantastic videos, but do you intend to make another movie, after ’Cradle of fear’ ?

-Dani : For ‘Cradle of fear’, a lot of people misunderstood the fact that we just supposed to have fun horror film, like early Peter Jackson movies, ‘Bad taste’ or ‘Braindead’. Everybody involved in the film had great a time doing it, pretty good laughs, and it sold exceptionally well in the underground circuit and you can even buy it at Blockbuster’s and places like that. A funny thing is that when you see the Brazilian version, dubbed into Portuguese : it’s hilarious, they’ve completely redone all the voices !

-Paul : It’s brilliant !

-Dani : There’s talks of doing a second one when everybody's got the time.

-Dani : We recently shot a video as well for a track on the album called Babylon AD and it was directed by a guy called Wiz, who also worked with Manson , Smashing pumpkins, and recently Oasis, and it’s loosely based on a film called ‘Salo’, which is a twist on ‘120 days of Sodom’ by the Marquis de Sade, about a group of aristocrats who inhabit this castle for 120 days, captured unwilling participants, victims, and abused them sexually. Apparently, it was a statement on the triumph of vice over virtue. It’s a very depressing film. It's loosely based on that, we wear pin-striped suits and look very Italian, with greased-back hair.

-Paul : It’s a different level of sickness, you can go as far as a dress or a suit, there’s no limit to the imagination.

-Easy question : if Cradle was a movie ?

-Dani : A cross between ‘Sleepy Hollow’, ‘Nightmare before Christmas’ and ‘Dracula’ : the old ones had the atmosphere, the new ones have gore. I quite like the recent one, by Francis Ford Copolla. The set is so beautiful, it

capture the essence of England at the period.

-How, after ten years, do you judge your career today and how the things evolved ? Are you satisfied ?

-Dani : People paint a very dark picture sometimes about how things had been, because we have had line up changes, but we haven’t slipped down at all, each record has gone bigger and better, got more sales, the whole thing has been a bit of an adventure. It's like a machine, if something breaks, it needs replacing. It's part of the ploy. The people change, but Cradle of Filth remains. I think the name will probably outlive the members. It's wrong to have regrets, things like that shadow your mind, but you can’t go back and change things because everything happens for a reason, no matter how confusing it seems at the time, so we’re very positive about the future, it's just a case of working hard. We’ve got to a point where last year was very busy year for us, we spent the whole year writing this album and recording it, and now that’s done. Now we're just gonna look at the rest of the year and wallow in what we've achieved, enjoy the shows and kind of spread our wings and actually relish in the achievement.

I just come back from the first holidays I’ve got in years, and that open my eyes to the fact that we now passed the barrier and it's time to look around and enjoy what has been achieved.

-When will we see you in Paris ?

-Dani : In april : be there ! ( 14 april in Paris Bataclan)

Propos recueillis le 16 janvier 2003 à Paris par Jean Paul Coillard.

Trad : Jean Paul Coillard et Marie Lecocq.