Blistering.com: Was marketing the band at this degree something you envisioned from the onset?
Filth: I did, but I didn’t know if it was going to happen. I wanted to be a journalist, that’s what I wanted to do and I was going to start from the bottom up so I could be a music journalist. I had an internship at the East England Daily Times and I remember my mom being quite proud of it, but then – and I don’t know why – I decided I would get laid off for a year to try my luck out with the band. My girlfriend and I lived on peanuts for a year just so I could indulge this desire to be in a band. I promised myself I would give it my all.
Blistering.com: It was also good timing on your part to mix black metal with Goth.
Filth: It makes me laugh sometimes as well. I don’t know what it means, this word “true.” And most of the time it comes from the mouth of people who are still a glimmer in the eye of the milkman when we were doing our first record. I don’t know if true means originators or what, or just sticking to your guns, but I think we fill both categories. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not bigheaded because I can tell you as many flaws in myself, but I’m telling you fact, that’s all.
Blistering.com: Then, at what point did you stop caring about what those people thought?
Filth: It’s always in the back of my head until my daughter was born, so we’re talking about From the Cradle to Enslave. It instigated the spilt between Les (Smith, keyboards currently in Anathema), Stuart (Antsis, guitars) and (drummer) Nicolas Barker. But, I saw Nicolas and I get on well with him now. I cannot stand Stuart. He’s one of the few people I would turn my back on. But Les, bless him, we’ve just come back from doing a bunch of festivals and he was playing with Anathema and we had a great laugh.
But the point is, when my daughter was born, the world was a bigger place. I had somebody else to look after. I wasn’t going to let a couple of spoiled brats from Norway get in the way.
Blistering.com: Is there a possibility of the Cruelty lineup getting back together? I know you shot down some rumors pretty quickly not too long ago.
Filth: We’re full-steam ahead and this album is a testament to that. I would never rule something out, but it’s unlikely. There may be a close-call on it and it would definitely be without Stuart for it to happen. It would have to have Paul if it were to happen.
Blistering.com: What’s the touring schedule shaping up to be?
Filth: December 1st is the beginning of our festival called “The Darkest Tour.” It’s us, Gorgoroth, Moonspell, Septic Flesh, and another band. The American tour is going to be seven to eight weeks. I think it starts around the 7th or 9th of January and it’s us, Satyricon and Septic Flesh. As a band, we’ve done, in our opinion our ultimate record. Everything that everybody thinks about Cradle of Filth or thinks Cradle of Filth should be is on this record: the lyrics, the artworks, and more importantly, the music. Because of that, we didn’t want to shy away from anything. The ultimate thing we could do on this tour is a tour with Dimmu [Borgir]. We’ve got Gorgoroth, Satyricon, Moonspell…we’re trying to get Mayhem to come on the road with us because this American tour is going to be the first of many.
Blistering.com: What, a possible Cradle/Dimmu co-headlining tour?
Filth: You got to be joking, co-headlining? We’ll be the ones who’ll be headlining. We’re going to try to combine the essence and ideologies behind this Gilles de Rais thing because obviously, we’re not going to be able to play the whole album. We’re going to bring the stage show we usually have in Europe, not the same one, but one that’s close. We have a new designer on board, so we’re going to have a great light show as well as static stage production. America hasn’t even seen Edwina Filth, which is our 13-foot long animated puppet. We’ve always had to ship her and she doesn’t like long journeys. We want to bring a big stage show this time; we want when we come out for it to be an event and we want fucking great bands to play with us. We want to be upstaged because it will make us play better ourselves.
www.myspace.com/cradleoffilth