Cradle Of Filth: Moments In Time From A Golden Chapter
Over the last 10 years, CRADLE OF FILTH have undergone some significant changes, coming out the other side feeling full of life again. The last decade or so of the band has been viewed by many as a second golden generation in terms of their line-up, output and quality of live shows. With the release of Trouble And Their Double Lives, the band’s first live album in over 20 years, they now have a document of this period. The place of the live album in music has changed a lot since 2002’s Live Bait For The Dead and with that in mind, Dani Filth explained how this creation came to be.
“I haven’t really been a big aficionado of the live record since actually funnily enough, the album that got me into metal, which was Live After Death [IRON MAIDEN] so there must be a decline somewhere,” Dani explains. “Ours was circumstantial in respect of that thing everybody seems to have forgotten about, the pandemic. After it delayed the release of our last record and the move from our previous label to our new one, we found ourselves with a space in which someone gratuitously, our live engineer, said, you know what, ‘why don’t you release a live album?’”
The studio engineer then had, in the words of Mr Filth himself, the unenviable task of sifting through all the recordings to compile them into one live album that summarises five years of touring. Whilst Dani admits that this album is purely a consequence of being put on a delay and having time to fill before recording their new album in several months, he is happy to have markers in time to look back on whether it’s a body of work or an Instagram post.
“I guess the album is just one giant bookmark. We had a bit of a reboot in the camp which started in 2013 and it’s been a great period, a renaissance in fact. Hopefully, we carry on the tradition with the aforementioned new album, which we’ll see release possibly this time next year because we’ve got a live album this year and then that collaboration we are doing. So yeah, hopefully, the good times continue and I can’t really say much more about it as I’m sort of looking from the inside out.”
Despite having all of the recordings already banked, it’s no surprise that with a band like CRADLE OF FILTH who have such a long and storied discography, choosing what makes the cut was no easy task. For their recent co-headline tour with DEVILDRIVER, minus the inclusion of a newly-released song, the band were left with just 55 minutes to cram nearly thirty years of material into. Having described that experience as “nigh on impossible”, it was not much easier when assembling the live document.
“There are so many parameters that you have to abide by. Obviously, you’ve gotta place everything in the time period because it’s gotta be recorded. You want it to cross-section the entire back catalogue so it doesn’t favour one epoch or the other. Modern songs, old songs, middle earth songs, the whole lot. Fan favourites, your favourites, it’s just gotta be eclectic.”
And yet, as they always do, CRADLE OF FILTH have over delivered. Not only are there 14 live tracks to dive into, but for the real CRADLE OF FILTH head completionists out there, two bonus songs and two entirely new studio tracks also feature on the album. The two entirely new cuts, She Is A Fire and Demon Prince Regent act as a bridge between 2021’s Existence Is Futile and the forthcoming Napalm Records debut that’s on the horizon.
“It serves as a good gateway towards a new album but I mean, it’s you know, it’s not rocket science. It’s not gonna be so different that people go, oh my god, they’re doing reggae now. What the hell? How did we not foresee this calamity? But it’s sufficient to say this is CRADLE OF FILTH in a modern context, it relates back to an earlier time and it reeks of this album or that album, but has this modern slant to it.”
“I guess it’s a nod of affirmation at the same time to say these songs may be from the past relics or images, windows into the past, but we’re still quite a current band and you know, here you go. We’re playing you the current stuff first so you don’t forget.”
Trouble And Their Double Lives is out now via Napalm Records.
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