Cradle of Filth

Read Judith’s interview with the British Metal band

On the very cold afternoon of Saturday January 17th, 2009, I had the privilege of sitting down with Paul Allender, guitarist and one of the master minds of British Metal band Cradle of Filth.

CONFRONT: Hi

PAUL: Hi

CONFRONT: So how is the Montreal weather treating you?

PAUL: Pretty damn cold…

CONFRONT: Yes…I know, that’s Quebec for you!

PAUL: I guess

CONFRONT: Ok so let me brief you on what and who we are. We are an online magazine called CONFRONT magazine. Our motto is Dare Defy Provoke. Dare to Listen, Defy stereotypes and Provoke change. We want to provide our readers with all genres of music.

PAUL: That’s very good!

CONFRONT: First I have some CONFRONT Magazine questions that we do ask to all of our interviewees.

PAUL: Cool

CONFRONT: ok, what would be the 1st and the last CD you remember buying?

PAUL: The 1st and last CD… well the 1st one would have been a record…god I’m old… I remember going to see the movie Grease at the theater and I asked my parents to buy it for me… that would be the 1st one I remember…

CONFRONT: and what would be something more recent… can be something of iTunes, or even something that would have been given…

PAUL: well the thing I remember buying on iTunes is a movie and some episodes of Family guy

CONFRONT: Don’t we just love Family Guy

PAUL: For sure

CONFRONT: Ok in our magazine we have a section called Daily Urges. Ok we go through the members of our teams and also ask our readers and our interviewees for their daily urges. We consider a daily urge anything and everything musical, old that we think needs to be rediscovered or new that needs to be known. Do you have any Daily Urges?

PAUL: Your readers, that are of course fans of metal music, should be listening to a German band called “Secret Of The Moon”. They are just amazing.

CONFRONT: Good, thanks for that, we shall make sure to go and check it out. Do you have any guilty pleasures musically…like anything that maybe you fans would not expect you to like or even that maybe you wouldn’t want anyone to know you like… obviously they will now ?

PAUL: I love ABBA. Elvis, I fucking love Elvis. You know I grew up listening to a lot of 50′s and 60′s music, me dad used to play good old rock’n roll all the times when I grew up so this to me brings me back and well that’s what made me want to me a musician.

CONFRONT: Thanks 50′s and 60′s music then ? Ok 1st and last concert you remember attending as a fan?

PAUL: Well the very very very 1st concert I’ve ever been to, is by a band called Spider. I got blown away by them, they really got me into wanting to be in a band.

CONFRONT: That’s the best!

PAUL: Yeah… and the last one, wow I can’t really remember… might have been when we were recording this album… we took a drunken weekend off…

CONFRONT: ok the actual 8th studio album came out last October, tell me about that album… what does it mean to you?

PAUL: this, this album is whatever blood, sweat and tears that was put into it, you know…. I made sure that every song on this album, you know what it is, it’s when I write a song, I don’t just think of a guitar, I think of what the orchestra’s gonna do, I think of what the drum’s gonna do, I think of all that as a whole. Same thing when I write a riff, I imagine how the whole lot is gonna sound like. I write songs as in atmospheres, not only for one instrument at the time.
I don’t classify myself as a guitar player at all…cause the guitar is just one part of a song, I think of the whole song, I write riff by riff and that means I’m writing in atmospheres. So every time I came up with atmospheres on this album, I made sure that all the members of the band were in that atmosphere, that they got what I felt and could play it. I also made sure I had the same chills up and down my spine when I play and listen back to it. This feeling is very important to me.

CONFRONT: this is the best
PAUL: Exactly. We’ve done a lot with this album and well I’m already starting on the next one!

CONFRONT: Well that’s good news for your fans! Does this work the same way for lyrics?

PAUL: Yeah, I think it does, I’m of course more of the music mind and Dani is the mind behind the lyrics. But of course he is always thinking of things to say, concepts and all.

CONFRONT: this is great. You left in 1996 to come back in 2000, what made you come back?

PAUL: Cause they begged me too… when I left well there was a lot of things that weren’t working, we were a young band and well we were into partying and all and I wanted to play music, I was never the type to sit around and let it come to me, I’m into working so when I came back this was a condition… I wanted it to work I wanted us to work as a team and make music… and well here we are now.

CONFRONT: exactly and it works! We did a piece on metal a couple of months ago and saw that there was a resurgence on metal’s popularity, what do you think about that? What made it come back?

PAUL: I think it’s a generation shift… it’s as simple as that, young kids get older and into our music again.

CONFRONT: Makes a lot of sense, we also talked about the differences between the different types of metal, extreme metal, death metal and all, do you make a distinction, I play extreme metal or for you, you just play metal…?

PAUL: we are a metal band, that plays metal that’s all. Bands today categorize themselves and well when that specific disappears the bands disappears as well. You know some of the riff we play are inspired by jazz riffs.

CONFRONT: really that’s awesome

PAUL: so we don’t label ourselves

CONFRONT: it’s just music

PAUL: exactly it’s just music

CONFRONT: you being from England… do you see a difference between the bands there and the bands here in America, and also is there any difference in the fans?

PAUL: As far as bands are concerns I feel there is a huge difference. I don’t want to upset anybody…
CONFRONT: of course not just go ahead…

PAUL: Well I feel in America, all the bands sound the same, there isn’t really any harmonies and when there is it’s sounds sterile… in Europe hundreds of bands do it, they’re all individuals you know… They want to copy instead of being individuals. I feel that’s the difference.

CONFRONT: What about the fans?

PAUL: well I feel the fans are fans you know, all of them are happy to hear and see u play. In Europe they tends to sit back and watch here and in South America, fans are more demonstrative I’d say…. Not that Europeans aren’t just not in the same ways.

CONFRONT: You guys have been together for almost 20 years now…

PAUL: Yes. (he answered this question with a “please don’t mention it” tone in his voice… always with a lot of humor though)

CONFRONT: What would you want you guys’ legacy to be?

PAUL: I just want us to be remembered as one of the greatest metal band of our era. I want to be remembered as a musician, not a guitar player but a musician. I also would love to be remembered as a song writer as well.

CONFRONT: Well Paul, I think you’ve already done a good job at that!! Thanks a lot for your time this is it.

PAUL: Well you’re very welcome thanks to you for coming to interview us!

www.cradleoffilth.com