Last year the recently formed Werewolf Press released the amazing Realm of the Damned – Tenebris Deos graphic novel. Now re-imagined as an animated motion comic version, packed with metal personalities adding voiceover work, it will be available tomorrow, April 7th. Watch the trailer below: Continue reading
Hidden in the deepest and darkest shadows of the United Kingdom, the Heavy Metal demons Belial are releasing their début album Nihil Est (Siege Music), meaning “there is nothing” in Latin.Continue reading
Ahead of the release of their second album, Devilment 2: The Mephisto Waltzes (Nuclear Blast Records), Ghost Cult caught up with lead vocalist and creative driving force Dani Filth to talk all things Devilment, touring, soundtracks, horror, Faust and oh, the small matter of the next Cradle of Filth album…Continue reading
You’re wrong about Cradle Of Filth.
It’s not your fault – the prevailing consensus has been wrong about them for years now. Metal fans pride ourselves on dedication and loyalty, but that comes with a price – we’re extremely quick to turn on any perceived betrayal, and few crimes are less forgivable than a bid for mainstream approval. It’s no exaggeration to state that Cradle of Filth went from darlings of the underground to hated pariahs in a very short period of time, and once that bridge had been burned its effects were projected backwards in time until the commonly accepted descriptions of them (they’re a pop band, they sound like Marilyn Manson, they ripped off bands who in truth were inspired by them) bear no resemblance to the reality. This was never more clear than when the debut by Old Corpse Road – a band unashamedly vocal about their debt to classic Cradle – was praised by the same people who had nothing good to say about the band that inspired them.
Unfortunately for those who still care about them, since 2003 the band have not exactly been making things easy for themselves. Beginning with major-label debut Damnation Of A Day (Sony), their albums have all been plagued with the same flaws – too long, too many filler tracks and not enough of the razor-sharp song-writing that marked their early days. The latest in a long line of releases that promise a return-to-form but don’t quite pull it off, Hammer Of The Witches (Nuclear Blast) walks into all of these traps once again. It’s not a bad album – they’ve honestly never released a genuinely bad one – and it has its share of catchy riffs and passages, but once it’s over it proves itself entirely incapable of sticking in the mind. Compared to its predecessor The Manticore (Peaceville/Nuclear Blast) it’s either more classic or less ambitious, depending on how generous you feel, but the result is the same – an album that sounds like Cradle by numbers, that’s offers little reason to care if you don’t already, and not enough reward if you do.
Hammer Of The Witches is a competent enough album by a band who know exactly what they’re doing, and fans of their most recent material will find something worth listening to here, but those still waiting for a return to former glories may need to finally accept that we’re not going to get it, and decide whether we’re happy to settle for the next best thing. Anyone who wouldn’t understand why Metal fans would defend this band would be better advised to listen to any of their first three albums or the VEmpire EP (Cacophonous) with an open mind to hear what they’ve been missing.
6.0/10
RICHIE HR
2014 saw the departure of Paul Allender from the Cradle of Filth ranks for the second time in his life; Allender having left to form The Blood Divine after the bands’ debut album The Principle of Evil Made Flesh (Cacophonous). The White Empress six-stringer then rejoined for what is often seen, perhaps unfairly, as the bands last “great” album Midian (Music For Nations/Koch) [I for one have a lot of time for Nymphetamine (Roadrunner) and Manticore (Peaceville) – ST]. With Allender’s departure, so the exploration of a shorter, punkier, more traditional verse-chorus structured album of 2012’s Manticore departed with it.
Cradle frontman Dani Filth then followed up Manticore with the debut album of his other band, Devilment, ten tracks of straight forward Gothic groove metal, resplendent with tongue-in-bum lyrics and simple, catchy slabs of rock club anthems. With his two most recent albums being simpler affairs, the obvious conclusion is that Hammer Of The Witches (Nuclear Blast) is a reaction, with its return to lengthier compositions and a more grandiose presentation, all tied up with some of the bands thrashiest riffs for a while. “I guess so” muses Dani. “We never do two albums the same. It’s definitely a bit more meandering, and I think people like to have that, they like Cradle of Filth to be about storytelling, to be very cinematic, about it being a journey and immersive. I personally like it. Some of my favourite Cradle songs are the ten minute ones – ‘Queen of Winter, Throned’, ‘Bathory Aria’, etcetera”
“The necessity of having to get 2 new guitarists on board, both joining the band at the same time for our tour with Behemoth last year, it’s given them a place almost like Murray and Smith, Hanneman and King” continues Filth, discussing “new” (they’ve been in the band a year, mind) guitarists Richard Shaw (Emperor Chung) and Ashok (Fear). “They’re very competent musicians. Their musicianship is out of this world and I can say that, because I’m a vocalist, so I’m only hanging around them!
“Everybody’s really contributed to this album and on that tour in particular we were plundering a lot of our old material, playing ‘Beneath The Howling Stars’ and ‘Funeral In Carpathia’ ‘Haunted Shores’ and I think that was a good springboard for us to then jump off onto writing this album”
Cradle recorded once again with Scott Atkins at Atkins’ own Grindhouse Studios, in deepest rural Suffolk. Speaking to Atkins, a guitarist himself and formerly of Stampin’ Ground, the producer confirmed the technical qualities of the new pair had hugely benefited the recording process. “Yes, they’re awesome, they’re fans of the band and they contributed well to the record” opines Dani of the guitarists’ contribution to a record that could easily have been a double album. “We were very prolific in the fact that we actually had to drop 3 really good songs which with a little bit more nudging day will hopefully see the light of day.
“Maybe if the album does well, we can extend the touring cycle and get an EP out with those three songs; that’d be on top of the two bonus tracks. We see all of our music as children and we didn’t really want to see those bonus track songs segregated from the bulk of the album, but record companies do as they do.
“We couldn’t decide on a track listing until the 11th hour, so, some people may even prefer those 2 tracks.”
Despite the impact, technical ability and understanding of the legacy of Cradle of Filth brought by the latest through the revolving door of official band members, what would Dani see as the definitive Cradle line up? If there was money on the table… “People have offered us a lot of money to do various things, but it’s just a bit shit really, in my opinion. It’s like going to Martin (Skaroupa – drums) and saying ‘Martin, we’re going about to do a tour, but sorry, you’re not invited because somebody’s given me a fat wad of cash to get Nicholas Barker back in.’
“And as much as I love Nicholas, and what a great drummer he is, it just doesn’t feel right, you know? And that’s one thing Cradle have always maintained throughout the years, thick and thin, whether people love us or hate us, we’ve always done our own thing, and we personally think we’ve done it for the right reasons. The possibilities are endless, People have come and gone and I can’t see it (a vanity tour) happening.
“Unless it was a VAST amount of money, and it got me my second luxury yacht…” chuckles Filth.
“Look, the line-up of Cradle of Filth is the current line-up. Hopefully should the longevity of the album continue, we’ll get in there and do the EP, because we’ve got 3 songs which are great and are only going to the better once they’ve been worked on further. And then we can add a couple of covers to the mix as well, because we’ve been favouring a few songs that we’d just like to add the Cradle touch to.
“But that’s the imminent future aside from the massive touring ahead of us. I’ve got some ideas for that (the tour), but we’ve got to keep them within budget, so the giant robot ripping off the roof of each venue, sadly, doesn’t seem viable…
“I’m a dreamer like that, see… We can only hope, hey?”
STEVE TOVEY
There aren’t many characters left in the world of rock and metal, those that we used to call “Rock Stars”, particularly populating those swathes of bands who sit betwixt strata, neither mainstream nor underground, being too extreme to be commercial, yet too commercial to belong to the underground any more.
For here lies the beast that is “He-who-takes-himself-too-seriously”, where frontmen are too concerned with being seen to be intellectual and learned, to present their bands as bastions of intelligence, and by proxy, “cool”.
Both loquacious and mischievous and one of the last of a bygone age of frontmen, Dani Filth is an erudite, self-aware and humorous chap, at ease mercilessly mocking himself and his own vehicle of melodic extreme metal, one Cradle of Filth, often before chuckling to himself.
In terms of speech mannerisms, the literarily savvy Filth orally moves in similar patterns to Russell Brand; selective, creative and poetic in his language. “I’ve backed myself into a corner, lyrically, yes,” conceded the distinctive frontman, “and I don’t think people would appreciate if I did try and simplify things, but I think that’s where my other band, Devilment, come in, it’s the fact there are no presumptions with those guys yet, so that’s like a pressure valve and is something I can do without having to worry about anything like some horrible little internet troll peaking over my shoulder every five seconds…”
Along with Brand, another protagonist who inspires a similarly marmite response, plenty of people love to hate on the ‘Filth. Not that, after 24 years of being the main focal point of such a mixed reaction, Dani gives much of a shit about those trolls any more…
“Fuck, no! There are way too many good things going on with Cradle of Filth for me to give one. I look at it with trite amusement now. I find it hilarious when I read spiteful comments. I actually think ‘You’re sitting down, writing this… what a waste of your time! All the things you could be doing in the world, and you’re spending your time moaning about something you don’t particularly like…’ It’s tragic…”
One of those “good things” is new album Hammer Of The Witches, the bands’ first for Nuclear Blast, and eleventh overall. Now halfway through their third decade, facing taking the band once more ‘round the sun with an impending European tour announced, along with plans to take in both South and North America before returning to play HammerFest VIII, is it no more than just a job? This is surely what Dani Filth now “does”. How does it all feel to be back in the cycle again?
“Having spent the best part of four months in the studio which is tantamount to living in a cocoon, we then emerge this big, horrible Gothic butterfly, then suddenly you’re back into the whirl and rush of humanity again. We were reintroduced the world from the theme of isolation, and being locked away out in the Suffolk countryside to flying out, playing a big festival in the Philippines, I presented a couple of award ceremonies, we’ve been doing summer festivals… Yeah, it’s just the tip of the iceberg at the moment.”
There have always been varied literary references flittering throughout Filth’s lyrics. From tales of Elizabeth Bathory to the Marquis de Sade to Dani’s own Gothic visions, dark romances have played out over the melodic blackened thrash and classic metal tones of the band. But this is a man who writes A LOT of lyrics for every album, for whom the cauldron of creativity must, surely, be in danger of reducing too far, and turning to unusable mulch? “Some of my notes probably aren’t fit for human consumption for a few hundred years” Filth admits, “but while sometimes you have panic attacks where you think “Shit, I’ve just been delivered 3 albums’ worth of material and I’ve literally got no idea where it’s going”, we work really hard on things and it all pans out really well in the end.
“The music suggests the ideology anyway, that’s where you get that epiphany. After 3 or 4 songs, you know the crux of where the album is going. You know, obviously it’s not going to be a reggae tune coming in, but in that respect, I don’t think the well will run dry… Though who knows, I’ve just babbled and totally forgotten what I was going to say, so maybe it will…”
Concepts, lengthy epics and gothic story-telling are all traits that Cradle have become known for… “Well, we’ve become known for quite a few things, not all of them good!” laughs Filth, before continuing to impart details on the cover and the central piece(s) of the album.
“I would say if there was any concept on the album, it’s very medieval. ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, which will probably delight a lot of traditional black metallists through its title, concerns itself with the crusades and draws obvious comparisons with today’s religious climes and the fact Mohammedans and Christians are still at each other’s throats, so spiritually we’re still in the same cesspit we’ve always been in. I would say, that concept bleeds nicely into everything else.” But with particular regard to Hammer Of The Witches, how does the concept translate across? “It’s a loose concept. One could be forgiven for thinking it was a concept album because the Latvian contemporary artist Arthur Berzinsh, what he’s done to draw it and draw it all together would make you think it was conceptual, but it’s only as conceptual as much as other peoples are.
“The title track is taken from ‘Malleus Maleficarum’ but our interpretation of that, which puts the hammer, the judges gavel, in the hands of the witch cults, practitioners of other-worldly practices!
“The album is testament to that; you listen to it and it sounds like a true Cradle of Filth album. And, at its’ essence you can tell this line up really enjoys playing with each other” concludes Dani, letting out a, um, Filthy laugh…
STEVE TOVEY
Speaking exclusively to Ghost Cult, Dani Filth – mainman of UK melodic black metal titans Cradle of Filth and gothic stompers Devilment – confirmed that there is life in the new dog yet, and that The Great And Secret Show (Nuclear Blast) was only just beginning…
“It’s not a project, it’s a band” begins Mr Filth when asked about his intentions for Devilment once the summer festival run comes to an end. “Cradle are literally spread across the known galaxy. Lyndsey is near Toronto, Canada, we’ve got 2 people in the Czech Republic, and we call them the Czech mates (groan), Daniel Firth lives in Glasgow, and the two people that live in England, well, he lives in the north and I live in the south! But we still spend so much time together that we’ll soon be pig-sick of each other.
“Whereas Devilment are very localized. The drummer lives a couple of streets away and we play soccer together, sorry – football… I’m not speaking American! The guitarist lives a couple of streets the other way, we rehearsed last night, physically, and it’s good. We’re busy writing a new album, slowly and surely, and they’ll be in the studio while I’m away (with Cradle).
“It’s really good, very different, very transient in fact, (and a) little bit more involved than the first album. We’ve shot a video for ‘Sanity Hits A (Perfect) Zero’ that’s coming out in August to coincide with the Summer Breeze festival (Germany – Devilment play Wednesday 12th August, while Cradle of Filth headline the Pain Stage on Friday 14th) and then we’re going to record a downloadable track for early Autumn to give people just a whiff of the new album and let them know we’re still alive.
“There may even be a chance of Devilment appearing at one of the shows on the English (Cradle of Filth) dates… well, more than a chance… I know they are…! So, it’s all good! So, not a project, and they’ll both (Cradle and Devilment) be working in tandem.”
I for one am glad to hear there will be more of the Goth Metal rock club anthems of Devilment to continue to provide a contrast to Cradle…
“Well, if I wanted to do more of the same thing, I’d join Dimmu Borgir, wouldn’t I…?!” Filth chuckles.
STEVE TOVEY
Cradle Of Filth have unveiled the cover art for their upcoming eleventh studio album Hammer Of The Witches, due out in July via Nuclear Blast. Frontman Dani Filth said:
“The artwork for ‘Hammer Of The Witches’ was created by Latvian Artist Arthur Berzinsh and is a lavish walk-through of the lyricism, drawing on rich Renaissance themes and displaying them in beautiful yet unsettling scenarios. Half of the detailed pieces are totally original for the release, others are Berzinsh classics cunningly tailored to the themes of the album, which are themes rife with heady witchcraft, be it persecution, retribution or unfettered spiritual liberation. The female form is rampant throughout the artwork, unashamedly displayed in its classical rendition of beauty… and horror.”
Cradle Of Filth is;
Dani Filth – Vocals
Richard Shaw – Guitar
Ashok – Guitar
Daniel Firth – Bass
Martin Skaroupka – Drums
Lindsay Schoolcraft – Keys & Female Vocals
Cradle Of Filth on Facebook
Cradle Of Filth on Twitter
Cradle of Filth the UK’s most visionary and hellish outfit have unveiled the serene and alluring, yet harrowing cover…
Posted by Cradle of Filth on Monday, April 20, 2015
Cradle of Filth the UK’s most visionary and hellish outfit have unveiled the serene and alluring, yet harrowing cover…
Posted by Cradle of Filth on Monday, April 20, 2015
With part one covering the conception, gestation and birth of Devilment, the second part of our feature sees guitarist Daniel Finch opening up to Ghost Cult about the sound beneath the skin, and the elements that feed in to their debut album The Great & Secret Show
“What do they say about assumption being the brother of all fuck-ups?” (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels)
Before I heard Devilment, I’d been told it was like the Gothic bits of Cradle of Filth with the poppy bits of Rammstein. I’ll be honest, my interest was piqued, but taken with a spoonful of sugary scepticism. Although Cradle had enjoyed a romping return to form on The Manticore (Peaceville), prior to that you have to go back to 2004 and Nymphetamine (Roadrunner) for the last genuinely, consistently good Cradle album.
But here’s the rub, The Great & Secret Show (Nuclear Blast) isn’t a Cradle of Filth album. While the cleaning up of Dani Filth’s vocals may come as no surprise as recent recorded output has seen him heading down that route, a route which allows his intelligent chronicles to be aurally more lucid, it may be something of a revelation just how big, fun, catchy and groovy the music that Devilment have produced actually is. It’s not black metal, Jim, and there are no pianos and top hats in forests, but it’s got a huge rock club groove running all the way through it, like a jackpot seam of coal.
“Dan wanted it to be a side-project, it was important it was seen that way, and I think that’s one of the negative things is that Cradle fans go “It doesn’t sound like Cradle”, but my thing is “Why would it? Why would you want to go out and do a band that sounds just like your day job band?” So while it does sound a bit like the Goth (Goth, not Gothic…) bits of Cradle mixed with a poppier Rammstein, there’s more to it, there’s more than a hint of a White Zombie bounce, for example. “I am influenced by the 90’s metal sound, but in a weird kind of way. I liked the nu-metal stuff when it came out. I liked it when bands did dropped tuning, like when The Almighty did Powertrippin’ (Polydor), Alice In Chains as well. Not too sludgy, but that dark groove.
“And, obviously, there’s Pantera as well.”
“A friend of mine hates Pantera” continues Finch, reliving the musical memories that form the core and crux of who he is as a musician these days. Many of us of a similar age to myself and Daniel have taken that circular journey, going first through the more extreme or divergent elements of music, but ending up back at the roots of the tree, with the classics of the 1990’s that defined our musical journeys. “I remember, we took a bus trip to Donington Monsters of Rock, the 1994 one when Sepultura played as well. Anyway, Pantera came on and he’s all ‘Fuck them, I’m going to go get a beer’. And he’s stood there at the bar when ‘Walk’ comes on, and he’s looking around and everybody is nodding away, even the bar staff, and he said he just couldn’t help but nod, too. That idea has always stuck with me. Mid-paced riffs and those big grooves. That works for me.”
It’s a concept Finch has retained as a core principle of Devilment. “So that’s the thought, if you’re at a festival and you walk into a tent and we are playing, would you bang your head to it? If the answer is yes, then we’re doing the right thing. It’s very important to be a good live band these days. Look, it’s every musician’s, every metal head’s dream, from hearing your first WASP record and air-guitaring off your bed with a baseball bat, surely!
“I’ve tried to do the fast black metal bands, and you’re playing shows, and everyone’s looking at you weird and all you can think is “Fuck me! Everybody hates me”, but you play a groovy bit and heads start banging, people start smiling…”
The lyrics and song titles on The Great & Secret Show are very tongue in cheek, redolent of Martin Walkyier in his pomp and prime, with Mr Dani Filth both curator and orator of puns and fictions. “Oh, he’ll like that (Walkyier reference). He’s massively influenced by him, Venom and Celtic Frost. He had free reign and didn’t have to write to the Cradle formula, there’s no ‘Gothic Romance In The Kingdom Of Death or Destruction’ expectation, so you can have a song title like ‘Even Your Blood Group Rejects Me’ or ‘Girl From Mystery Island’.”
Yet when even the Overlord of Metal Comedy, Lord Devin Townsend (in the midst of two albums about a coffee and flatulence obsessed alien, mind) declares metal and humour is a dangerous combination, then isn’t this just inciting some of the more po-faced members of the Metal Archives High Council to tut and wag their fingers? Is it confrontational, or is Devilment not worried about people taking you seriously? “I didn’t write the lyrics. For him, he’s been able to have a free reign on what he wants to write about lyrically. But, I mean, they are all very Dani Filth lyrics still. He creates these stories and massive landscapes and ideas.
“I’ll admit, at first, I was like “Err… that’s not what I had in mind…” but you see where he’s come from on it.
“And, well, he is a bit kooky…”
The one thing that is clear about Devilment and their long term future is, that this is a band that will need to balance around the demands of their frontman’s other band. How big an impact does it have on the band? “Well, to begin with, we just fucked around for a bit. Dani was busy doing Cradle, so obviously we couldn’t put in the time you normally would with a new band, so it was difficult to get the momentum going, but, now this is my thing. Devilment has been mine and Dan’s baby for the last few years.”
It is clear, though, that while this is Dani’s side-project, it’s Daniel Finch’s main beast, so when the vocalist and lyricist heads back to Cradle, what happens then? Will we be seeing more of Daniel Finch now that Devilment has seen his profile and stock rise? “I’d like to (do another project). It’s difficult because I’m not sure what my record contract says as to what I’m allowed to do! I mean Aaron (Boast – drums) does Kemakil and Colin (Parks – guitar) does The Conflict Within, while Lauren (Bailey – keys) and Nick (Johnson – bass) do Vardo & The Boss, so they all have their little bits. We’ve started writing the second album, and while the whole Cradle thing is happening, we want to knuckle down and write the next album.
“If I get time, I’d like to write some stuff for people, doing some songwriting, maybe not metal, maybe indie/goth, and I’ve always been into folk music. But at the same time I’d love to do something that’s really fucking extreme, stupidly heavy, eventually.
“But, look, Devilment has to come to first for me.”
The Great & Secret Show is out now via Nuclear Blast
WORDS by STEVE TOVEY
East Anglian Gothic Groovecore Metallers Devilment have just released their debut album The Great & Secret Show on Nuclear Blast. Before heading out on their maiden touring voyage around Europe, in part 1 of a 2 part feature, guitarist Daniel Finch caught Ghost Cult up on the band’s back story.
The story of Devilment is the story of a guy from a whole other band. It is the story of a guy who sang about vampires. It is the story of a guy called Dani. No, not that one, though we’ll get to him later. The story of Devilment is the story of one Daniel Finch, former guitarist and vocalist of cult Goth Metal band 13 Candles, who, perhaps to avoid too much confusion has reverted to his full name of Daniel. Two Dani’s in the same establishment, and it not being a hair and booty salon in Essex, would have been too much… even if the band is from Suffolk (or Suffuck as the latest range of merchandise announces), which borders TOWIE-land.
It is a story that covers apathy, heartbreak, years in the wilderness and a serendipitous return to the cradle of youthful ambitions before finally finding the devil that was ment (sic) to fulfil the musical destiny of our humble protagonist. “It was 1998 and it was not long after 13 Candles second album. It was just a weird time, musically, then” begins the gregarious and verbose guitarist, referring to the last time our paths crossed and also to the period that saw all but the kvlt-est of labels follow Roadrunner’s suit after the US giants ditched all their non-“trendy” bands (sellers or not), the game played out by the major labels five years previously when grunge turned the rock world on its head repeated in the underground.
Death Metal was dead, Black Metal dying, Grind extinct, Goth/ic metal was the millipede that had lost 998 legs and the innovation and fertile creativity of 90’s underground metal had exhausted itself. It was a scene where labels like Earache had been left bereft of all their Death Metal talent following an exodus that Moses would have been proud of leading, and sought to fill the void with the pop-punk of Janus Stark, the nu-metal of Pulkas, the gabbacore of Beserker and, um Mortiis. “It’s the same old story, I guess. Record labels were interested, but nobody wanted to actually go out and sign Candles after we’d been dropped from Cacophonous, and after a while people (in the band) wanted to do other things. So, it got to the point where it was ‘Is there rehearsal next week?’ ‘No, can’t be bothered’, and, do you know what? We just didn’t rehearse again.”
Fast-forward an ominous 13 (!) years, through a pile-up of failed bands, blow-outs and a relocation, to one serendipitous evening… “The first time I’d met Dan (Dani Filth) was at an At The Gates gig, around ’95. And he’s there, sitting in a chair, but right at the front of the stage, his wife stood next to him, and I’ve thought ‘Who the fuck is that tosser?!’ And then I realised, ‘Ah, it’s that guy from Cradle of Filth’, so I went up and was all ‘I like your band’ and he just fucking ignored me!
Quite a few of the other Cradle guys were there, and my mate, randomly, had this pair of plastic vampire teeth, so he ran up to the Cradle guys going ‘Look at me! I’m a vampire!’ They weren’t happy and it almost turned into a big bar brawl! Then a couple of years later I bumped into Dani again at a festival and said hello, and he just walked past me, and I thought ‘Wanker’ (laughs).”
It seems fate, dark forces, or just pure bad luck on Mr Filth’s part, had decreed that at some point the two Dani’s would unite to take on the universe with their heavy metal. They say good things come to those who wait, and while it’s probably rare for Daniel Finch to be called virtuous, his patience paid off. These stars were meant to align. “I bought the first Cradle album twenty years ago, and I auditioned for them way back then, around the second album. Well… I didn’t actually get to audition, I sent a demo tape in, but nothing ever came back. I bet Dan’s still got it in his loft!”
But providence was to intervene and give Finch the opportunity to take a step forward in his music career and had that particular circle completed by having Dani Filth ask to join his band. “It was 2011 when Devilment became a band” orates the be-dreaded East Anglian, before revealing the twisted nails of faith and fate that brought the two leading men together. “I was just about to get married and I had a massive, massive argument with my wife about the wedding, as you do. So, my best man took me out for a drink. I was there, all ‘I don’t want to get married’, as you do, and Dan walked in.
“So I went up, said I used to be in 13 Candles, but he wasn’t interested, just blanked me and walked off. But later on he came up, bought a beer, and we got chatting. From that, we started hanging out and I mentioned I was doing this new band and asked if he knew anyone that was a good singer, but I wasn’t sure what type of vocals I was looking for.
“He said to send him over the stuff and he got back and said he wouldn’t mind giving it a go, so I thought ‘Alright then…’ Then, next thing, he was in the studio demoing on the stuff I’d done, and I remember thinking ‘We’ve got something, here!’
“Next thing, Nuclear Blast are putting the album out!”
There will be many who begrudge the success of the band and assign a large proportion of it to the status within the scene of their frontman. While Devilment is clearly more than something for Dani to do when he’s not doing Cradle of Filth, the scepticism of the general punters, be they Cradle fans or not, seems to be a prevailing cloud on the horizon. As is always the way for bands that are even slightly successful, rather than being pleased people pour forth their negativity and look for ways to criticise. “Look, we are lucky, we have got Dan in the band and it definitely helps; how many local bands do you see that are awesome that don’t get this opportunity? But you don’t get signed (to Nuclear Blast) without having good music” reasons Finch.
However, having Dani, who is a rather divisive figure in the UK metal community and beyond, a person who people love to hate, in the band, there are cons to go with the pros… “I guess it’s always going to be a thing, because Dan is marmite. People love him, or they fucking hate him. But then, I saw a review where the guy was saying ‘I hate Dani Filth, and I hate Cradle of Filth, and I always have, but this I like’.”
The good news for Messrs Finch and Filth is that it appears to be that there are many more people than the vocal minority out there, plenty of whom are looking for a little Devilment in their lives…
Part 2 of our feature on Devilment follows soon
The Great & Secret Show is out now via Nuclear Blast
Words by STEVE TOVEY