Cradle of Filth: Toil and Trouble (2023)

By BRIAN GIFFIN

DANI Filth is teasing an Australian tour by Cradle of Filth next year, possibly in about 12 months. By then their new studio album will be close to release, their 14th volume of new material. In the meantime, the veteran extremists have issued their second official live album, Trouble and Their Double Lives.

“It wasn’t a planned live record,” he explains pleasantly. At home and surrounded by his vast music library, Filth seems a little cranky at first – it’s early and he’s been stood up by another interviewer, but he quickly warms up.

“We found ourselves with some time on our hands due to the pandemic that delayed Existence is Futile, and subsequently the move from Nuclear Blast Records to Napalm Records. We finished our tenure with Nuclear Blast, and that was delayed by a year. So it was suggested by our live engineer to release a live album utilising all the shows he’d recorded during the Cryptoriana World Tour. So that’s really where that came from.”

Featuring a whopping 18 tracks, Trouble also includes two new studio songs recorded with the band’s previous line-up. Unlike other live albums that add studio tracks at the end, “She is A Fire” and “Demon Prince Regent” take their place at the start of each of the album’s discs. The accompanying clips use footage from the tour, tying them in to the rest of the songs.

“I don’t know what sense it makes to anyone else,” Filth says, “but it made perfect sense to us from the beginning. They crown the album, or whatever, and they serve as a good spearhead for the live album by utilising videos for both tracks. The reason both of those appeared on the album is because they were originally due for a new album, but we had a line-up change during that period, so we decided to hit refresh with the live record and those two songs, they weren’t hugely long… they weren’t ‘Bathory Aria’ or anything like that so we thought it would give people a window of insight into what Cradle of Filth are currently up to.”

By now the band will be deep into recording their next instalment, having begun immediately after a festival date in the US in early May. Work will continue across the northern summer when they break between festival dates, and they expect to have it released by mid-2024. The singer says he can’t say too much more about it “because I’ve been told not to!” but it’s not going to be a full concept album.

“We’re trying to concentrate on writing individual, catchy and powerful songs, and concept albums don’t really lend themselves to that, because there’s too many pieces that have to be put together to make a story if you’re doing a proper concept record from A to Z.”

Cradle’s last album Existence is Futile was a thematic departure for the band, a study in existential dread that was recorded at the height of the pandemic. Martin Škaroupka had just laid down the drum tracks before any lockdowns occurred, laying down a framework for the rest of the band.

“I could carry on with the album,” Filth explains, “because the studio’s very close to me in England. Obviously the others are in various parts of the world, so they had to be flown in. It was lucky that we had the drums down because it’s very difficult to do an album without the drums laid down. I was able to carry on with my stuff because we had extensive demos.”

The first part of the lockdown period, he says, felt like a holiday after a gruelling four year-long touring cycle that took in both the Cryptoriana World Tour and a subsequent tour for the re-issue of Cruelty of the Beast.

“The first part of the lockdown was great! We had great weather, I had the house to myself because I had recently separated from my ex-wife, so I had a big house to myself, lots of sunshine… it just felt like a big holiday, just turn up to the studio everyday relaxed. The second year,” he admits, “got a bit grating.”

During that time, however, Cradle of Filth put on some live stream events and played a US tour, with some very severe COVID practices in place.

“We actually toured America at the back end of the COVID period, which is unusual. It was very simple, but both our support bands contracted the virus during the tour and both had to leave the tour, so it wasn’t without its complications.”

Trouble and Their Double Lives chronicles that huge tour run that came in the wake of 2017’s Cryptoriana (The Seductiveness of Decay). Even without the two studio tracks, the double album clocks in at close to two hours with material that spans most of their catalogue. After such an extensive period on the road, there was a wealth of tracks to choose from, and Cradle of Filth made it part of the mission that it didn’t repeat tracks from their earlier live testament, Live Bait for the Dead.

“I gave it to our studio engineer to syphon through, and he had to listen to shitloads of things…” He laughs. “Loads and loads! He narrowed it down to shows where he thought we were more explosive, sounded better… then obviously we curated ideas we had for running order.”

While it didn’t require the same level of effort as writing a new album, there was an exhaustive process involved, nonetheless.

“It was considerably difficult once we’d decided to do it, because we’ve only got so much time, and in order to give people a good representation of Cradle of Filth through the ages, not just focus on one particular era, and we wanted to include fan favourites and not repeat ourselves with tracks that have already been on live records. Because even though it’s been 20 years, they still sit on the same shelves together in record stores. So it was difficult, but not as involved as doing a full new album which you’ve spent two years writing, but it was no picnic.”

One track Filth was very pleased to have included was “Bathory Aria”, the sweeping and definitive 11-minute saga from Cruelty and The Beast which he and the band attacks with malevolent glee.

“It’s pretty selfish to have it on there,” he admits with a cheeky grin, “because it takes up the space of two, or maybe three, songs!”

Nevertheless, it would be hard for fans to argue with the 15 other live selection that join “Bathory Aria” here, including the wildly catchy Gothic “Blackest Magick in Practice”, the howling “Born in A Burial Gown” and – of course – Nymphetamine’s outlandish “Gilded Cunt”, among others. The new songs also provide, as Filth eagerly points out, a window into what can be expected from them next year.

“The live album is a bridge, it’s been very well received so far, and I think the inclusion of two new songs shows people where we’re heading. It may not be a very fair representation of the new album, because it’s different, but it’s not so vastly different that people will be mistaken. I’m always pleased when my favourite bands release new music, regardless of whatever. So I think it’s the perfect bridge. The last album was only a year and a half ago, so we’re doing OK!”