OD – You’re set to play the Palladium in London this October for a 20th anniversary of ‘Cruelty and the Beast‘.
DANI – Yep – that’s the plan.
OD – Can you reveal what is planned for the live show?
DANI – I can’t really give anything away! Our managers literally said “don’t tell anything”. I can say that we’re hoping to introduce our new beer, a clothing line that we’re doing in conjunction with someone else – it’s going to be sort of interactive… ah, I can’t give anything away. So, as well as the concert, we’re trying to cram all that in there as well.
OD – How much of a blast from the past will it be playing songs live that may not have been touched for years?
DANI – It’s strange. It was a difficult album to afford back in 1998. We got into the flow of it and now we’re setting our sights as a band towards other albums, other songs that have never been tackled before. It’s cool – it’s opening the gates to all kinds of unnatural possibilities.
OD – I know you said you can’t reveal much, but the show that it coming up in London – will it be recorded for DVD release?
DANI – Possibly. We might be…
OD – In regards to the new album – how far along is the song writing process?
DANI – We’ve been on tour since February – I think we’ve had a total of nine or ten days at home since then. I literally came home from America, spent two days at home then went to Europe and then South America. Came back, four days at home. We done a ‘Cruelty…’ run in Europe.
We’ve been everywhere – Australia, we have China coming up, New Zealand, Tel Aviv… Warm-up shows for the Palladium, the Palladium itself.. we finish the tour on November 2nd, in Belgium. But, we have been nibbling away at the writing and the songs are still embryonic.
We have a couple finished actually, but there’s no cohesive story. Normally I have to have three or four songs finished before we decide on a lyrical direction because it’s easier to do it that way instead of dictating beforehand, because then everyone feels like they can’t express themselves. They’ve got their own ideas or they’ve been coming up with their own ideas, so we’ll figure it all out as we go along.
OD – Is there any planned concept?
DANI – We haven’t got enough tracks yet! For the last album, we had four or five songs – you know, that’s half an album – before I thought in regards to the concept “Ah, I’ve got it”. So, for this we have plenty of ideas, but we’re going to make it cohesive.
OD – The Cruelty and the Beast reissue ran into some legal trouble and became postponed presumably due to former members who played on the album. Can you update us on where it’s at now?
DANI – I believe now that Sony have tried their damnedest with said-‘one particular member‘. Sony have spent a year patented to his every whim, even though he has asked beforehand that he is mentioned in everything and anything.
Sony just decided, “look, we’ve done everything – we’re not going to flaunt the law, we’re just going to go ahead with it”. If this news goes out now, I don’t know if it’s going to affect the whole ordeal – so we have to thread carefully. But yeah, they’ve decided they’re going to go ahead with it.
OD – Will the remixing/remastering of ‘Cruelty…‘ be a relief for you, due to some criticism in regards to the sound work?
DANI – No – I think it sounded great when it was done! It’s just that things have moved on. It was an intentional drum sound. Well… I wont go into that either, but the new sound is incredible.
We had to literally dissect the album and build it back up again. It was all from the original tapes, and they had to be baked to bring the original sound back to life. The hardest thing was retaining the atmosphere, to make it sound very modern and big.
OD – Looking back at the initial release of ‘Cruelty…‘, during recording did you think it was going to be as iconic as it ended up being?
DANI – Well, for starters it was a lot of work. It felt like there was a curse on us while we were making ‘Cruelty and the Beast‘, because we kept running into so many issues.
Once it was complete it just felt like a huge weight had lifted. As for being iconic, well, we definitely tried to stand out and bring something new to an audience, and while we hoped it would get an interesting reception, I don’t think anyone expects a creation of theirs to blow up that big. It was definitely nice.
Cradle Of Filth will be performing in The London Palladium Saturday 19th October. Tickets are on sale now via this link.
Norrie Kivlehan
www.overdrive.ie 2019.