Cradle of Filth are an English
extreme metal band, formed in
Suffolk in 1991. The band's musical style evolved from
black metal to a cleaner and more "produced" amalgam of
gothic metal,
symphonic black metal and other
extreme metal styles, while their lyrical themes and imagery are heavily influenced by
gothic literature,
poetry,
mythology and
horror films.
The band has broken free from its original niche by courting mainstream publicity (often to the chagrin of its early fanbase), and this increased accessibility has brought coverage by the likes of
Kerrang! and
MTV, frequent main stage appearances at major festivals such as
Ozzfest,
Download and even the mainstream
Sziget Festival, and in turn a more "commercial" image. They have sometimes been perceived as Satanic by casual observers, although their outright lyrical references to
Satanism are few and far between, and use of Satanic
imagery has arguably always had more to do with the
shock value and mythological usage than any seriously-held beliefs. According to a 2006 issue of
Metal Hammer magazine, they are the most successful British heavy metal band since
Iron Maiden.In January 2011 they topped an online poll to find Suffolk's most iconic image. However they were not among the 20 finalists put forward by the competition's judges.
History
Early years (1991-1996)
Cradle of Filth's first three years saw three demos and a rehearsal tape recorded amidst the sort of rapid line-up fluctuations that have continued ever since, the band having more than twenty musicians in its history. The band also recorded an unreleased album entitled
Goetia prior to the third demo and their style shift.
Goetia was set for release on Tombstone records, but all tracks were wiped when Tombstone went out of business and could not afford to buy the recordings from the studio.
The band eventually signed to
Cacophonous Records and their debut album,
The Principle of Evil Made Flesh, was also Cacophonous's first release in 1994. A step up in terms of production from the rehearsal quality of most of their demos, the album was still nevertheless a sparse and embryonic version of what was to come, with lead singer
Dani Filth's vocals in particular bearing little similarity to the style he was later to develop. The album was well-received however, and as recently as June 2006 found its way into
Metal Hammer's list of the top ten black metal albums of the last twenty years.
Cradle's relationship with Cacophonous soon soured; the band accusing the label of contractual and financial mismanagement. Acrimonious legal proceedings took up most of 1995,
and the band finally signed to
Music for Nations in 1996 after only one more contractually obligated Cacophonous recording: the
EP V Empire (Or Dark Faerytales in Phallustein) which, it has since been conceded, was hastily written as a Cacophonous escape-plan.
Despite the circumstances of its release however, its handful of tracks are staples of the band's live sets to this day, and "Queen of Winter, Throned" was listed among twenty-five "essential
extreme metal anthems" in a 2006 issue of
Kerrang! magazine.
The EP also marked
Sarah Jezebel Deva's debut with the band, replacing
Andrea Meyer, Cradle's first female vocalist and self-styled "satanic advisor"
Deva appeared on every subsequent Cradle release and tour until
Darkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa, but was never considered a full band member, since she also performed with
The Kovenant,
Therion and
Mortiis, and fronted her own
Angtoria project along with Cradle's current bass player,
Dave Pybus.
Music for Nations era (1996-2001)
Dusk... and Her Embrace followed the same year: a critically acclaimed breakthrough album that greatly expanded the band's fan-base throughout Europe and the rest of the world.
A
concept album of sorts based generally on
vampirism and specifically (though loosely) on the writing of
Sheridan Le Fanu, Cradle's inaugural album for Music for Nations set the tone for what was to follow. The album's production values matched the band's ambition for the first time, whilst Dani's vocal gymnastics were at their most extreme.
The increasingly theatrical stage shows of the 1997 European tour helped keep Cradle in the public eye, as did a burgeoning line of controversial merchandise; not least the notorious t-shirt depicting a
masturbating nun on the front and the slogan "Jesus is a cunt" in large letters on the back. The t-shirt is banned in New Zealand,
a handful of fans have faced court appearances and fines for wearing the shirt in public, and some band members themselves attracted a certain amount of hostile attention when they wore similar "I Love
Satan" shirts to the
Vatican.
Alex Mosson, the
Lord Provost of Glasgow from 1999–2003, called the shirts (and by implication the band) "sick and offensive". The band obviously approved, using the quote on the back cover of the 2005 DVD
Peace Through Superior Firepower.
The infamous "Vestal Masturbation" t-shirt design.
In 1998, Dani began his long-running "Dani's Inferno" column for
Metal Hammer, and the band appeared in the
BBC documentary series
Living With the Enemy (on tour with a fan and his disapproving mother and sister)
and released its third full-length album
Cruelty and the Beast. A fully-realised concept album based on the legend of the "Blood Countess"
Elizabeth Bathory, the album boasted the casting coup of
Ingrid Pitt providing guest narration as the Countess: a role she first played in
Hammer's 1971 film
Countess Dracula. The album led to Cradle's U.S debut,
and Dani claimed it in 2003 as the Cradle album of which he was most proud, although he conceded dissatisfaction with its sound quality.
The following year the band continued primarily to tour, but did release its first
music video,
PanDaemonAeon, and an accompanying EP,
From the Cradle to Enslave, featuring the music from the production. Replete with graphic
nudity and
gore, the video was directed by
Alex Chandon, who would go on to produce further Cradle promo clips and DVD documentaries, as well as the full-length feature film
Cradle of Fear. The band released their fourth full-length studio album on
Hallowe'en, 2000.
Midian was based around the
Clive Barker novel
Cabal and its subsequent film adaptation
Nightbreed.
Like
Cruelty and the Beast,
Midian featured a guest narrator, this time
Doug Bradley, who starred in
Nightbreed but remains best known for playing
Pinhead in the
Hellraiser films. Bradley's line "Oh, no tears please" from the song "
Her Ghost in the Fog" is a quote of Pinhead's from the first
Hellraiser ("No tears, please. It's a waste of good suffering...")
and Bradley would reappear on later albums
Nymphetamine, Thornography, and
Godspeed on the Devil's Thunder. The video for "Her Ghost in the Fog" received heavy rotation on
MTV2 and other metal channels, and the track also found its way onto the soundtrack of the werewolf movie
Ginger Snaps (it would also feature, much later, in the video game
Brütal Legend).
2001 Hiatus
From February 8, 2001 to February 29, 2001 the band went on a temporary hiatus due to unrest amongst the band members due to Dani Filth's insistence for the band to remain sober on their 2001 European tour.
Sony interlude (2001-2004)
The longest-ever interim period between full-length Cradle albums was nevertheless a busy time for the band.
Bitter Suites to Succubi was released on the band’s own "Abracadaver" label, and was a mixture of four new songs, re-recordings of three songs from
The Principle of Evil Made Flesh, two instrumental tracks, and a cover of
The Sisters of Mercy's "No Time To Cry." Stylistically similar to
Midian, the album is unique among Cradle albums in featuring exactly the same band members as its predecessor, but is generally regarded as an EP and often overlooked in the band's canon.
Further stop-gap releases followed in the form of the "best of" package
Lovecraft and Witch Hearts and a live album,
Live Bait for the Dead. Finally, the band (principally Dani) also found time to appear in
Cradle of Fear while they negotiated their first major-label signing with
Sony Music.
Damnation and a Day arrived in 2003; Sony's heavyweight funding underwriting Cradle's undiminished ambition
by finally bringing a real orchestra into the studio (the 80-strong Budapest Film Orchestra and Choir replacing the increasingly sophisticated
synthesizers of previous albums) and thus marking the band's belated gestation - for one album only - into full-blown symphonic metal.
Damnation featured the band’s most complex compositions to date, outran its predecessors by a good twenty minutes, and produced two more popular videos: the
Švankmajer-influenced
Mannequin, and
Babalon AD (So Glad For The Madness), based on
Pasolini's infamous
Salò. Roughly half the album trod the conceptual territory of
John Milton's
Paradise Lost - showing the events of
the Fall of Man through the eyes of
Lucifer - while the remainder comprised stand-alone tracks such as the
Nile tribute "Doberman Pharaoh"
and the aforementioned "
Babalon AD"; a reference to
Aleister Crowley. "Babalon AD" was the first DVD-only single to reach the U.K. top 40, according to the
Guinness Book of Records of British Hit Singles and Albums. Feeling that Sony's enthusiasm quickly palled however, Cradle jumped ship to
Roadrunner Records after barely a year.
Move to Roadrunner (2004-2010)
2004's Nymphetamine was the band's first full album since The Principle of Evil Made Flesh to not be based around any sort of overarching concept (although references to the works of H. P. Lovecraft are made more than once). Cradle's bassist Dave Pybus described it as an "eclectic mix between the group's Damnation and Cruelty albums with a renewed vigour for melody, songmanship [sic] and plain fucking weirdness." Nymphetamine debuted at #89 on the Billboard Top 200 chart selling just under 14,000 copies, and the band's growing acceptance by the mainstream was confirmed when the album's title track was nominated for a Grammy award.
Thornography, was released in October 2006. According to Dani Filth, the title "represents mankind's obsession with sin and self... an addiction to self-punishment or something equally poisonous... a mania."
On the subject of the album's musical direction, Filth told
Revolver magazine, "I'm not saying it's 'experimental', but we're definitely testing the limits of what we can do... A lot of the songs are really rhythmical -
thrashy, almost - but they're all also really catchy."
A flurry of pre-release controversy saw Samuel Araya's original cover artwork scrapped and replaced in May 2006, although numerous CD booklets had already been printed with the original image.
Thornography received a similar reception to
Nymphetamine, garnering generally positive reviews, but raising a few eyebrows with the inclusion of a cover of
Heaven 17's "Temptation"
(featuring guest vocals from
Dirty Harry), which was released as a
digital single and accompanying video shortly before the album.
Thornography entered the Billboard chart at #66, having sold nearly 13,000 copies.
Long-term drummer
Adrian Erlandsson departed the band in November 2006, with the intention of devoting his energies to his two side projects
Needleye and the currently touring (2010) Nemhain. The official press release from Roadrunner saw Erlandsson state "I have enjoyed my time with Cradle but it is now time to move on. I feel I am going out on a high as
Thornography is definitely our best album to date".
He was replaced by
Martin Škaroupka.
Work on the eighth studio album, released in October 2008 as
Godspeed on the Devil's Thunder, began early that year following a
GWAR-supported tour which took in Russia, the Ukraine, the UK, Romania, Slovakia and North America.
Godspeed was a concept album based around the legend of
Gilles De Rais, a 15th-century French nobleman who fought alongside
Joan of Arc and accumulated great wealth before becoming a satanist, sexual deviant and murderer.
Kerrang! preferred the album to the "relatively weak"
Thornography, calling it "grandiose and epic",
while
Metal Hammer said it had "genuine narrative depth and emotional resonance",
and
Terrorizer called it "cohesive, consistent and convincing".
It sold 11,000 copies in its week of release, entering the Billboard 200 at #48.
Peaceville Records (2010-Present)
Cradle's relationship with Roadrunner came to an end in April 2010, with the announcement that the band's next album would be released by the British independent label
Peaceville Records, using Cradle's own Abracadaver imprint.
Dani Filth cited "the artistic restrictions and mindless inhibitions imposed by a major label" as the band's reason for going independent.
Early
press releases named the new album
All Hallows Eve,
but by August 2010 the title was confirmed as
Darkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa.
Released on November 1st, 2010, it is a concept album in the same vein as its predecessor,
Godspeed on the Devil's Thunder; this time centering on the demon
Lilith, the first wife of the Biblical
Adam,
and also making reference to
Greek,
Egyptian and
Sumerian mythology, the
Knights Templar and the
Carmelite Nuns. The label referred to it as "a dark tapestry of horror, madness and twisted sex".
, while Filth called its sound "creepily melodic, like
Mercyful Fate or a dark
Iron Maiden".
Metal Hammer's Dom Lawson felt it was "another sumptuous and spectacular eruption of gothic melodrama, perverted sonic schlock and balls-out extreme metal bombast", and likened it to an "instalment in an ongoing series of novels."
Cradle's next project has been announced as an orchestral album titled
Midnight in the Labyrinth, which, according to Dani Filth, will "reinvent" tracks from the band's first four albums as "full soundtrack quality stuff... with choirs, strings and some narration". The album was approaching completion in November 2010 and is set to be released in 2011.
Genre
Cradle of Filth's particular
subgenre has provoked a great deal of discussion,
and their status as a
black metal band or otherwise has been in debate since near the time they became popular.
Dani, in a 1998 interview for
BBC Radio 5 for example, said "I use the term heavy metal, rather than black metal, because I think that's a bit of a fad now. Call it what you like: death metal, black metal, any kind of metal...",
while
Gavin Baddeley's 2006
Terrorizer interview states that "few folk, the band included, call Cradle black metal these days."
The band's style has been described as
symphonic black metal,
gothic black metal,
and dark metal.
However, the band's evolving sound has allowed them to continue resisting definitive categorisation. They are audibly influenced by
Iron Maiden, have collaborated on projects like
Christian Death's
Born Again Anti-Christian album (on the track "Peek-A-Boo"), and have even dabbled outside of metal music with dance remixes ("Twisting Further Nails", "Pervert's Church" etc), although these have fallen by the wayside in recent years. In a 2006 interview with
Terrorizer magazine, current guitarist
Paul Allender said "We were never a black metal band. The only thing that catered to that was the
make-up. Even when
The Principle of Evil Made Flesh came out — you look at
Emperor and
Burzum and all that stuff — we didn't sound anything like that. The way that I see it is that we were, and still are now, an
extreme metal band."
Appearing on the
BBC music quiz
Never Mind the Buzzcocks on April 9, 2001, Dani jokingly claimed Cradle's sound as "heavy
funk", and in an October 2006 interview stated "we'd rather be known as solely 'Cradle of Filth', I think, than be hampered by stupid genre barriers."
Band members
