Cacophonous Records

- When did you start Cacophonous records and why did you choose this particular type of music?
- Cacophonous was started in 1994 specifically to deal with demos from underground bands. The first signing was Cradle of Filth, but that wasn't a demo, it was actually recorded. We moved on to releasing things on CD and vinyl because it got such an overwhelming response from people and the quality of the stuff was so high that we thought it was only fair that we released things like that. I didn't start Cacophonous, I'm the label manager. It was started a year or so before I took over, by a guy called Nihil (aka Neil Harding), who's very involved in the black metal scene in England and Germany and has been into that kind of music for ages. The only thing is that now all the innovation has gone out of black metal and there are very little other directions that people can move in. We've done vampiric metal, orchestral metal, we've done everything, but now we're still looking towards extreme music for Cacophonous, but maybe not necessarily black metal, which you'll see in September/October with the release by a band called Emnity, which is Paul Ryan's band, who used to be in Cradle/Blood Divine. We've also got a band called Lilith, who are also part of Cradle/Blood Divine and then Raven Stone, Fifth to infinity, who are a lot more black metal than the other two, but we are trying to slightly move away from it.
- How did you personally come to that kind of music?
- Black metal isn't exactly the thing that I would listen to first and foremost at home. I mean, I come up through the ranks of the goth-type thing and obviously I really love a lot of industrial music, but I like a lot of metal stuff, I like all the Machine Head, Fear Factory types, I like hard metal. I also love Slayer and Pantera, that's the kind of things I really like. I'm not a big fan of Angra, Stratovarius and all that kind of things.
- What were the main difficulties you encountered for this label?
- For Cacophonous? Obviously, we had the problem with Cradle of Filth a while ago, but I think that has actually been resolved. But because there were problems with Cradle, they were bad-mouthing us to the other bands they were touring with. That got into a bit of a complete nightmare, especially when things were completely unfounded. I mean, since then, I think a lot of people have actually realized that we're not really the bad guys and we didn't really do anything wrong, it was just a lot of personal misunderstandings. And obviously, Nihil, when he signed Cradle was actually a really good friend of them. So when personal life comes into that kind of business, it just gets very complicated and then there was a falling out and things just got nasty. But it was more to do with the personal end of things than business. I mean, it was all the stuff in the press about us never having paid them, etc., but we have the actual bank transfers to prove that we have done it and their management has copies of these. I personally don't have any problem with Cradle themselves, but that was the biggest problem that we've encountered with Cacophonous, especially when it started going off on Dimmu Borgir and they were saying that they had left the label, when it wasn't true, they were only signed for one album. But the labels are always the bad guys and it's the way it'll always remain. Nobody ever wants to listen to what we say.
- I'd also like to know about other kinds of difficulties, with the media, the press, etc.
- Since Cacophonous is mainly an underground label (underground in ethics, not necessarily size and business sense anymore), the kind of music we deal with is obviously a minority style, so trying to get that on television or anything is very very hard. And when they seem to be interested, they just want to look at the sensational side, like the church burnings, etc. When things get out of hand, it just turns into a freak show, instead of looking at the metal and the aesthetics of it all, they make it look like a bad tabloid report. Radios are quite easy for us actually because there are so many good underground radio stations worldwide, including England, surprisingly, and press isn't really a problem because we get on very well with the metal press. But I would say it's different for the mainstream press, people like the NME, Melody Maker... Cradle of Filth had a small relationship with them a while ago, but again it seemed to be like the lampoon thing, how many times can a band swear in an interview, you know, that type of things. It gets really boring after a while and people just treat you as a joke and it's not. I know that maybe some people do set themselves up to be ridiculed, but at least you can look a bit deeper than what people look like.
- Do you usually get lots of censorship problems, like the Cradle of Filth T-shirts?
- We had a lot of problems with the vampire poster campaign, because it was a topless woman. Personally, I think you see it on page 3 of the Sun every morning, why does it make a difference if it's on a wall? Anybody can go into a shop and buy a newspaper or something like that. Imagewise, I do tend to try and steer away from seriously conflicting images. If you look at our covers, a lot of it is more esoteric than conflicting really. I think Marduk and bands like that are a bit more confrontational. Personally, I don't have a problem with the images, but I'm trying to get things in the shops and try to sell things and if shops aren't going to take the CDs and the merchandise because of an image that people find offensive or whatever, it's not going to make the band any money. It will get them a lot of publicity and it will somehow let a point and I'd like to do it, but it just doesn't really make a lot of sense at the moment. Publicitywise yes, but moneywise no, unfortunately.
- What are your greatest joys and disappointments about this label?
- I really love my job and not many people can say that. I'm my own boss, I get to do what I do. The only thing that maybe I don't like sometimes is my working hours, because I really work a lot (nights as well), so you do get very tired. And it isn't as glamorous as anybody thinks. I mean, you see our office (little premises in Portobello), we're not like a big record company. If bands are in the country, I offer them to stay with me, so I never get any time to myself, that's probably the worst bit. But I can live with that.
- Last year, you created another label, Visible Noise, could you tell us about it?
- Visible Noise was started because I don't actually listen to black metal at home and I thought it was maybe time for a departure, because we have enough contacts and enough people that we can deal with that would make the starting of another label very easy. There's only as yet one band on it because the quality of bands at the moment is really problematic. I set it up initially because I want to give smaller bands a chance. At the moment, it's really UK bands, because everybody seems to be signing American bands, I have friends here on labels and they're dealing with America at the moment, Earache for starters. I saw Kill II This supporting Megadeth quite some time ago, then I received a demo of them and they're really fantastic, they're really lovely people, very enthusiastic, they'll tour at the drop of a hat. The label was set up to give people a chance to get their stuff out and with people like that, I'd never want to get back and say I don't want it to exist anymore, because they're so enthusiastic and there are a couple of other bands now, maybe not quite in the league of Kill II This, but they're gonna do very well as well. It's going to be more in the line of things like Fear Factory, Machine Head, that's the type of thing I listen to personally, so that's what I really want to do. Someting that's maybe a little fresher than black metal now, because black metal has been around for so many years. Kill II This have been going on for a long time, this is actually their second album, but the first album "Another cross to bear" didn't really do very well because it wasn't promoted properly and they didn't have the budgets to go touring, they paid for it all themselves. So essentially, I'm just giving them a chance to prove themselves and they've done it. They're doing very well, I think they have a lot more stuff ahead of them... fingers crossed.
- Do you consider the underground side of black metal a good or a bad thing?
- I think the underground side is fantastic, it's where everybody has come through. Without the underground, black metal wouldn't exist to start with. I mean , it's like going back to the problem question you asked me before, with the bands kicking off and saying we haven't done this or that, we were the first people to deal with Cradle and Dimmu Borgir. And what they forget is that if we hadn't signed them all those years ago and hadn't given them a chance, they wouldn't exist. And I mean, obviously we're the bad guys, but without us, they wouldn't be where they are now. Maybe I'm blowing my own trumpet a bit there, but it is true, because at the time, nobody was interested in black metal, nobody was touching it.
- I mean, when bands start to get known, they sometimes make mediocre records...
- Yes, that's a problem, because everybody believes that Cradle and Dimmu Borgir have completely sold out. But I don't think you can say that really, because everybody exists essentially to make money for their jobs and things like that and if people say they're just doing it for the love of it, it's a complete lie. All bands want to make money, they just want to be rich. Otherwise, they wouldn't be doing what they are doing. So just because Cradle of Filth and Dimmu Borgir have got all the money behind them now, I don't think they've sold out, they just look a bit better, they've got stylists working on them, they've got huge advertising campaigns going. The new Dimmu Borgir album is fantastic, I'm not too keen on "Cruelty and the Beast", I like them, I just don't like "Cruelty". But I think maybe it's a little bit of bitterness from the underground bands, I shouldn't really be saying this actually, because lots of people have accused us of selling out and said that we're not an underground label anymore. But what can you do? We've got a back catalogue of thirty-odd titles, we have more money now because the company is doing well, is that selling out or is that just trying to promote what you want to do? It's a very difficult argument. I mean, personally, I love the underground, because whenever I go abroad to gigs, it's so nice that everybody knows each other, wherever they are in Europe, I think it's brilliant. You don't get that in any other genre of music, it's really tightly knit. But obviously, the tight-knitness causes problems as well, because people back-stab and fall out, etc. But it was the same with the goth scene when I was a kid really. I think the underground would accuse us of selling out now. Especially when we release the new albums that are coming out in the second half of this year, because we are departing a little bit from black metal, that will be the last straw of it all. But I think things have to move on, you can't just go on making black metal for 15 years. The whole genre is becoming more dilute now, because, as I've said, there's no other direction that people can move in. Things will change, it might be a cyclical thing, where it will go through black metal, through hardcore, through traditional metal, I don't know. Things have to change, it has to be on a continuum really.
- How do you see the labels tomorrow?
- I would say that Cacophonous would expand more in terms of genres, but I don't want anybody to think that we're not going to do extreme music, we might do different forms of it, but it still will be extreme music. We're going to be doing more hardcore stuff and industrial, because, as I've said, I really like industrial stuff. For Visible Noise, I would just hope that I could get another 5 or 6 good bands, but the search for them at the moment is just so difficult. As I've said, I've concentrated on mainly UK bands and maybe that is a problem because a lot of bands start out now very young and they're really cocky and think they're just brilliant. It just doesn't work like that, I'm for the enthusiasm, but practice makes perfect. For Visible Noise, I want more bands and for Cacophonous, just a more varied set of genres in the extreme music field.
Interview by Jean-Paul Coillard and Marie Lecocq

Cacophonous - Visible Noise