Interviews_CoF_I1

Interview with the Vampires: Interview with Cradle of Filth
From Terrorizer magazine 1996

Cradle Of Filth is already a legend in their own unlifetime. The biggest
black metal band in Britain, they have become a rallying point for the lost
and outcast, their 'Supreme Vampyric Evil' seducing much of the underground.

Now, with their first recording in two years, the 'Vempire' mini album, Nick
Terry invites the band in and finds out why this is one band advocating a
'darker love'.

"We were looking forward to this interview" says Nicholas, "if only because
so much bullshit and so many rumours have been going round about us that
it's an opportunity to set the record straight."

Indeed. CoF are that rare nocturnal creature within the extreme music scene,
a veritable legend. Flick through the Terrorizer personal classified's and
you won't find another band which receives so many mentions, from those
wanting to start bands, to the legions of lonely hearts and penpals. It
seems that everyone now either wants to sound like them, or fuck to them.
They've become that important, and all without having released a record in
two years. Part of that delay has been well-chronicled in the press, but
it's probably best to let the band's satanically elfin singer Dani
explain...

"We've had a year and a half of total shit, where we've had managers, record
companies, ex-members... sorry to use the term, but basically vampires
sucking our blood. It's totally ironic, but now all this has been sorted
out, we kicked out the manager and told him where to stick his fucking job,
ex-members are geting their comeuppance, and the dispute with the record
company is at an end. Everything's falling into place, but it's been a
harrowing time for us."

It can be hard to live up to a legend, especially when the absence of
everything but the live shows leaves the racks empty of new recorded
material, but Cradle Of Filth's second release, a mini-album entitled
'Vempire', more than lives up to said myth\mania. With half the old line-up
out on it's ear, it features a new keyboardist, the Irish and incredibly
loquacious Damien, new permanent guitarist Stuart, and a second, temporary
session guitarist Jared. More focused than 'The Principle of Evil Made
Flesh', the band's now somewhat aged debut, it's richer in almost every
department. More about that later.

"Well, one of the reasons we haven't had a release over the last year and a
half is because we've been in legal dire straits with our label." Dani
continues. "The reason that this EP is out through Cacophonous although
we've stated in the past that they should eat their own excrement, etc etc
is that it seemed a fitting end to this legal situation. As a compromise,
we'd release the EP in the event that 'Dusk...' would be our property and we
could take it and sell it to whatever company we deemed fit, which we are
doing now. Saying that, there's no intention to release substandard
material, because everything we do goes out to the people that matter. We
did spend a lot of time on it." Hmmm...

"If the people reading the magazine, the other bands, the whole scene,
anybody who cared thinks that CoF has been or from this point onwards is
going about some commercial entity," Damien interjects, "then they're really
sadly mistaken." Well, I suppose we'd better not be mistaken then.

"If anybody reading this magazine believes that magic works, yeah, that
magic is a true spiritual force," continues Dani, "and I'm not going to say
whether it does or not, then our band is a very dangerous band to be in.
Also, actually in terms of physically encroaching on our territory, if that
works as well, people should be scared of our band."

As the biggest band in Britain labelled Black Metal, Cradle Of Filth's rise
to infamy has paralleled the Scandanavian not to mention
European-wide-explosion in occultist, nordic, dark, or satanic metal . . . .
In some respects, 'Vempire' stays true - that ever popular word within the
scene - to the musical script, but not at the expense of quality
experimentation. But 'Vempire' is also many more things: an astonishingly
fluid, almost death metal guitar record, with it's plethora of riffs drawn
from all eras of extreme music; a symphonic rendition of Hammer Horror
films, thanks to Damien's ultra-gothic keyboard playing; a collection of
epic love stories. This is a band, that, like everyone else, grew up on
'thrash metal and farley's rusks', but also one that's delved elsewhere for
it's dark inspirations, into classical, harcore, and especially Goth.
Unsurprisingly, Cradle Of Filth are not over-enamoured with the Scandanavian
blackmetal sausage factory. After the interview, Dani hands me the crib
sheet he's prepared for the interview, and down in the corner, there's the
pithy comment 'Norway: nil point'.

"I know it's very hip that if you're involved in a certain scene to say, oh,
I never listen to it," Damien acidly observes, "but the people who say that
are just plain lying. Of course we listen to Black Metal, but only the
quality stuff." "A lot of these new bands though, that's all that they
listen to', drummer Nick adds, 'You can see that in their music. I think
that a lot of them are just living in Fantasy land too. A lot of them are
sucking up to Burzum, because of what he's done, he's like their idol."

"But that whole thing was good in one respect," Dani says, "because it
actually proved that music can still have a disastrous effect on people,
that it has relevance and importance in life. The only people I admire are
the people who go out and do things, not the people who take photos of
themselves, then go home and say, Mum, will you wash this for me. They are
the only things that will be remembered through history." Dani picks up a
leaflet on the pub table, for a guided tour of the Jack The Ripper murder
sites. "This is a perfect example. If the Count has murdered five people,
this is what would have happened a hundred years from now. I sincerely
believe that as much as I think that the guy is screwed in the head, what he
did was actually a good thing, and I'll stand by that, because it would have
been him or the other guy. I wouldn't have chosen to go to prison, but I
would've chosen to end the other guy's life rather than mine."

Considering their well-known infatuation with the Vampire myth, we shouldn't
be so shocked. After all, here's a legend where killing is both central and
sensual, passionate and amoral. Taking the 'T' out of Immortal isn't so
difficult after all.

Dani: "I think that Carole Borland, who acted in 'Dracula's Daughter' with
Bela Lugosi actually stated that the best thing about vampirism is it
represents a dark enigma, so women can be fascinated by men, and be totally
dominated by that man, but it's got nothing to do with sex. It isn't
actually a man, it's the epitome of evil. This is some kind of dark
sensuality that they can get into, they can be spiritually raped without
risk. She was so attracted to the dark sensuality of this one guy, it was
just such a powerful metaphor."

Incidentally, in his notes Dani talks of 'venerating woman as original sin,
and therefore, the reason for man straying from god.' I didn't know there
was such a thing as Satanic feminism, but here it is.

"The reason why people are attracted to vampirism," he continues, "the main
thing is life eternal. You could be 18 for the rest of your life, well, it
speaks for itself, in volumes. It's also the history of it for us, it's not
just the vampire legacy, because these days people don't just explore how it
transcended, they go back to Bram Stoker and see where his literary
influences come from, and when they referred back to historical figures such
as Elizabeth Bathory, Gilles De Rais, Peter Kurten, and Vlad Tepes. We enjoy
the romanticism of it, the fact that we've taken this primordial creature
who scurries around the sarcophagi and feasts from the dead, they've
vampirised it, so to speak, into a romantic character that has taken every
facet of human emotions and learned to utilise the suppressed sexuality of
Victorian England, where it'd take half an hour to find out what was beneath
a woman's clothes, and this tall, dark stranger can come along and seduce
her. Because of the things that Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee had said in
the past, like 'Ah, listen to them', that was a coined phrase, it wasn't in
the book."

Laboriously written/html-ised by Chris Milkins ([email protected])
Published in Terrorizer Magazine

From the Haunted Shores COF page (http://hauntedshores.simplenet.com/cof/)