Cradle of Filth are an English extreme metal band formed in Suffolk in 1991. The band's style evolved from black metal to a cleaner and more "produced" amalgam of gothic metal, symphonic metal and other genres. Their lyrics and imagery are influenced by Gothic literature, poetry, mythology and horror films. The band consist of founding member and vocalist Dani Filth, drummer Martin "Marthus" Škaroupka, bassist Daniel Firth, and guitarists Donny Burbage and Joff Bailey.
The band have broken from their original niche by courting mainstream publicity. This increased accessibility brought coverage from the likes of Kerrang! and MTV, along with main stage appearances at major festivals such as Ozzfest, Download and the mainstream Sziget Festival. They have been perceived as Satanic, even though their lyrics seldom reference Satanism. Their use of Satanic imagery has been for shock value rather than seriously held beliefs. Though the band are English, hailing from Suffolk, they have included members from Sweden, the Czech Republic, and the United States.
History Early years (1991–1996)
Cradle of Filth released three demos (Invoking the Unclean, Orgiastic Pleasures Foul and Total Fucking Darkness) in their first three years. These were recorded amidst rapid line-up fluctuations that have continued ever since, with the band having more than thirty musicians in their history. The album Goetia was recorded prior to the third demo and set for release on Tombstone Records, but all tracks were wiped when Tombstone went out of business and the band could not afford to buy the recordings. The band signed to Cacophonous Records, and their debut album, The Principle of Evil Made Flesh, was Cacophonous's first release in 1994. An improvement in production from most of their demos, the album was a sparse and embryonic version of what was to come. Lead singer Dani Filth's vocals bore little similarity to the style he would develop. The album was well-received, and in June 2006, found its way into Metal Hammer's list of the top ten black metal albums of the previous twenty years.
Cradle of Filth's relationship with Cacophonous soured. The band accused the label of contractual and financial mismanagement. Legal proceedings took up most of 1995, and the original version of the band's second album, Dusk... and Her Embrace, was recorded by the Principle... lineup for Cacophonous but scrapped. Subsequently re-worked with new band members for Music For Nations (see below), the embryonic Cacophonous version was released as Dusk... and Her Embrace: The Original Sin in July 2016.
The band signed to Music for Nations in 1996 after one more contractually obligated Cacophonous recording, the EP V Empire or Dark Faerytales in Phallustein, which was hastily written as a Cacophonous escape-plan. Despite the circumstances of its release, its 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 was Sarah Jezebel Deva's debut with the band, replacing Andrea Meyer, Cradle of Filth's first female vocalist and self-styled "satanic advisor". Deva appeared on every subsequent Cradle release and tour until 2010's Darkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa, but was never a full band member, since she also performed with The Kovenant, Therion and Mortiis, and fronted Angtoria with Cradle of Filth's former bassist, Dave Pybus.
Music for Nations era (1996–2001) The re-worked and re-recorded Dusk... and Her Embrace followed the same year. It was a critically acclaimed breakthrough that expanded the band's fan-base throughout Europe and the rest of the world. Cradle of Filth's first album for Music for Nations set the tone for what would follow. The album's production values matched the band's ambition, whilst Filth's vocals were at their most extreme.
The increasingly theatrical stage shows of the 1997 European tour helped keep Cradle of Filth in the public eye, as did a line of controversial merchandise, including a 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 attracted hostile attention when they wore similar "I Love Satan" shirts to the Vatican. Alex Mosson, the Lord Provost of Glasgow from 1999 to 2003, called the shirts (and by implication the band) "sick and offensive". The band used the quote on the back cover of the 2005 DVD Peace Through Superior Firepower.
In 1998, Filth began his "Dani's Inferno" column for Metal Hammer. 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 their third studio album, Cruelty and the Beast. A concept album based on Elizabeth Báthory, the album featured Ingrid Pitt guest narrating as the Countess, a role she first played in Hammer Film Productions' 1971 film Countess Dracula. The album led to Cradle of Filth's US debut, and Filth claimed it in 2003 as the Cradle of Filth album he was most proud of, although he was dissatisfied with its sound quality.
The following year, the band continued to tour, but released the EP From the Cradle to Enslave, accompanied by the band's first music video, which formed the centrepiece of the DVD PanDaemonAeon. Replete with graphic nudity and gore, the video was directed by Alex Chandon, who would produce further Cradle of Filth promo clips and DVD documentaries, as well as the full-length feature film Cradle of Fear.
The band released their fourth studio album in the Autumn of 2000. Midian was based on the Clive Barker novel Cabal and its film adaptation, Nightbreed. Midian featured guest narrator Doug Bradley, who starred in Nightbreed but is best known for playing Pinhead in the Hellraiser series. Bradley's line "Oh, no tears please" from the song "Her Ghost in the Fog" is a Pinhead quote from the first Hellraiser film ("No tears, please. It's a waste of good suffering..."). Bradley reappeared 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 appeared in the soundtrack of Ginger Snaps (it would later feature in the video game Brütal Legend).
Sony interlude (2001–2004) The longest period between full-length Cradle of Filth albums was a busy time for the band. Bitter Suites to Succubi was released on the band's Abracadaver label, a mix 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 collection was, at the time, unique among Cradle of Filth releases for featuring the same band members as its predecessor. Further stop-gap releases followed in the form of the "best of" package Lovecraft & Witch Hearts and the live album, Live Bait for the Dead. The band (principally Filth) appeared in the horror film Cradle of Fear while they negotiated with Sony Music.
Damnation and a Day arrived in 2003. Sony's heavyweight funding underwrote Cradle of Filth's ambition by bringing a real orchestra into the studio (the 101 piece Budapest Film Orchestra including the 40 piece Choir replacing the increasingly sophisticated synthesisers of previous albums) and marking the band's 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 videos: the Jan Švankmajer-influenced Mannequin and Babalon A.D. (So Glad for the Madness), based on Pier Paolo Pasolini's film Salò. Roughly half the album was inspired by 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 A. D.", a reference to Aleister Crowley. "Babalon A. D." was the first DVD-only single to reach the UK's top 40 charts, according to the Guinness Book of Records of British Hit Singles and Albums. Feeling Sony's enthusiasm waning, Cradle of Filth moved to Roadrunner Records after barely a year.
Move to Roadrunner (2004–2010)
2004's Nymphetamine was the band's first full album since Dusk...and Her Embrace to not be based around an overarching concept (although references to the works of H. P. Lovecraft are made more than once). Cradle of Filth'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 and plain fucking weirdness." Nymphetamine debuted at No. 89 on the Billboard Top 200 chart, selling just under 14,000 copies. The band's growing mainstream acceptance was confirmed when the album's title track was nominated for a Grammy award. The album's track "Coffin Fodder" was referenced in an episode of the Channel 4 sit-com The IT Crowd in February 2006.
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 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 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 No. 66, having sold nearly 13,000 copies.
Long-term drummer Adrian Erlandsson departed the band in November 2006, to devote his energies to his two side projects, Needleye and 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 with Martin "Marthus" 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 in Russia, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Romania, Slovakia and North America. Godspeed is a concept album based on the legend of Gilles de Rais, a 15th-century French nobleman who fought alongside Joan of Arc and accumulated great wealth before becoming an occultist, sexual deviant and alleged 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 No. 48.
Controversy over Suffolk Icon nomination (2010)