Belched from Hell’s depths onto the piss-stained concrete of Suffolk thirty long and disturbing years ago, Cradle Of Filth are undisputed giants of the heavy metal realm. Imperious purveyors of a perennially unique strain of dark, dastardly and wilfully extreme metal, with deep roots in the worlds of gothic horror and occult curiosity, the band led by Dani Filth has weathered three decades of tumult and trial, earning a formidable reputation as both a singular creative force and one of the most riotously entertaining live bands the metal world has ever produced.
From primitive early works like 1992 debut The Principle Of Evil Made Flesh to more expansive and theatrical classics like Cruelty Of The Beast and Midian, Cradle Of Filth defied trends and constructed their own idiosyncratic world of foul grandeur, becoming one of the UK’s most notable metal bands in the process. Since then, they have traversed the world countless times, hoovering up plaudits and praise from an ever-expanding international fan base. Resolutely prolific, the band’s catalogue has grown in depth and stature all the while, irrespective of line-up changes or the whims of the faithful.
In more recent times, Cradle Of Filth have hit an unmistakable hot streak of creativity and urgency. As a new line-up coalesced around the creation of 2015’s Hammer Of The Witches, fresh impetus propelled the band to new heights, as the revitalised crew became more in demand around the world than ever before. 2017’s Cryptoriana – The Seductiveness Of Decay repeated the trick with even more explosive flamboyance. Until a global pandemic brought the music industry to a jarring halt, Cradle Of Filth were almost permanently on the road and absolutely fucking flying. As a result, it should surprise no one that the band’s brand new album, Existence Is Futile, is yet another monumental and electrifying journey through the dark.
“We’ve enjoyed that momentum since this line-up came together,” states Dani Filth. “It was a line-up we needed to pull together for a tour, but it worked so much better than it was before. 2019 was our busiest year ever, we were everywhere. And here we are again, with the difficult third album! There was only one change for this record – we parted ways with Lindsay [Schoolcraft]. Our new keyboardist has been in the band since November last year and still no one knows who the fuck she is! We were going to reveal it for our planned live performance, but obviously that got put back. So you’ll have to wait and see.”
Buoyed by their recent triumphs, Cradle Of Filth – completed by drummer Martin ‘Marthus’ Škaroupka, guitarists Ashok and Richard Shaw, and bassist Daniel Firth – recorded Existence Is Futile during 2020, piecing the record together in isolation, at Grindstone Studios in Suffolk, with studio guru Scott Atkins (Devilment/Benediction/Vader). Although instantly recognisable as the work of these veteran blackhearts, the 13th Cradle Of Filth album is a wholly different beast from its immediate predecessors. Pitch-black, perverse and at times absurdly brutal and extreme, it hangs together with mesmerising fluidity. It is also absolutely rammed with giant, rousing melodies and moments of jaw-dropping invention. No one could mistake the venomously catchy likes of How Many Tears To Nurture A Rose or monstrous ballad Discourse Between A Man And His Soul for anyone other than Cradle Of Filth, of course, but Existence Is Futile confirms that the band’s exploratory instincts remain as sharp as ever.
“The last one was very ornate and fiddly and meandered all over the place,” Dani notes. “We tried to put all the ingredients of all the Cradle records onto one album. With that out of our systems, we tried to experiment a little bit this time. I hate that word, because you know what happens when Metallica experiment or Megadeth experiment! [Laughs]. Obviously there’s really stupidly brutal songs and some less brutal songs. But despite the extremes prevailing, we still wanted to do something really catchy. So there are, god forbid, choruses too!”
Underpinned by its huge and disarmingly organic production, Existence Of Futile is plainly the darkest and most unsettling album Cradle Of Filth have made in a long time. Eschewing the band’s trademark twisted storytelling in favour of horrified glimpses into the mortal void and ruminations on the inevitable destruction of life on Earth, its poignancy and relevance to the cluster of nightmares facing humanity in 2021 is impossible to ignore, even if Dani Filth insists, not unreasonably, that he didn’t anticipate a global pandemic when the news songs were being written.
“The album is about existentialism, existential dread and fear of the unknown. The concept wasn’t created by the pandemic. We’d written it all before that began, but the pandemic is the tip of the cotton-bud as far as the way the world’s going, you know? I guess the title, Existence Is Futile, does sound a little bit morbid. But again, it’s more about recognising that and saying that everything is permitted because nothing is really real, which was Aleister Crowley’s maxim. We all know we’re going to die, so we might as well enjoy it while we’ve got it. The last track on the album – Us, Dark, Invincible – it really emphasises that. We’re saying ‘Fuck it, we know the world’s fucked so let’s enjoy it while we can!’ The artwork for this record was done by Arthur Berzinsh, who also did the last two albums, and that’s very apocalyptic, too.”
With the best possible timing, Cradle Of Filth were already due to make a new album during those long, lonely months of lockdown in 2020. Having Grabbed the opportunity with both scabby-knuckled hands, Dani avows that unavoidable isolation from the rest of the world was the best possible incentive to get the job done, while also adding plenty of eerie atmosphere to the whole experience.
“I’d spend all day in the studio and see no one, and then I’d drive back home through a totally empty town. It just felt like you were in this little sleep chamber. It was a great feeling but very surreal. It was all during the summer, when the weather was fabulous. It was just me and Scott, for three months! The good thing was, while we were in there, at least three of the songs got a complete overhaul. I listened to the demos again and thought, ‘Fuck, why didn’t we put this on the album?’ But we /did/ put it on the album, we just changed it so much that it’s not the same song anymore. So that was a good bi-product of the lockdown situation.”
Sonically speaking, Existence Is Futile is easily the most powerful and dramatic record Cradle Of Filth have ever made: it’s the sound of band’s enviable onstage chemistry spilling over into the studio, propelling each member of the band to new levels of intensity. Combined with the expected labyrinthine arrangements and moments of spellbinding bombast, and Existence Is Futile may be the most vivid representation of the Cradle Of Filth experience yet.
“We were definitely leaning towards making sure that it sounded as live as possible, and especially the drums,” says Dani. “We tried to make everything as concise as possible as well. If there was clutter, we removed it. We wanted it to sound as big as possible, especially when Martin’s playing at a million miles an hour. With songs like Crawling King Chaos and Existential Terror, it’s a battle to make it sound massive, with choirs and the feel of the apocalypse coming, without it becoming a complete mess. I think we did a great job with it.”
Diehard fans will be thrilled to learn that horror icon Doug ‘Pinhead’ Bradley makes a welcome return to the Cradle fold, lending his dulcet tones to the epic Suffer Our Dominion, and to one of the forthcoming new record’s bonus tracks, as Dani explains.
“There’s two bonus tracks, and one of them is the third part to Her Ghost In The Fog, the culmination of that story. We decided to keep that from the record, because it didn’t encapsulate what the rest of the album was about, but obviously Doug Bradley makes an appearance once again. He lives in Pittsburgh, which he calls ‘The Pit’, and we did it over Skype. Naturally he did it really quickly. He also does this almost David Attenborough-ish role on Suffer Our Dominion, which is probably the most politically correct song we’ve ever done! We’re not really branching into politics, but it’s something that needed saying. It’s just saying that we fucked the planet up and we need to address the situation… but in Cradle-speak, of course!”
If we’re all going to perish in the flames of our own stupidity, we might as well have a suitably deranged and destructive soundtrack.
A bewitching, fearless nosedive into the abyss, Existence Is Futile confirms the ferocious efficacy of Cradle Of Filth in 2021. Bold, brave, wildly imaginative and heavy as hell, the band’s latest runaway train-ride through the flames is the perfect album for these most imperfect of times. As Dani concludes, “Be like the virus! Mutate and survive!”
