What better Halloween Interview could we have gotten for you than England’s FILTHY GODS (or demons?) OF METAL, CRADLE OF FILTH? We spoke with none other than Guitarist PAUL ALLENDER himself about thier new album Darkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa, their Art, their tour and much, much more
What can we expect, what’s the title and why?
It’s a lot faster than the previous album, and much more symphonic based. Many people are comparing it to what we used to sound like and well it’s ridiculously fast but then again some of the melodies are reminiscent of Dusk…and Her Embrace and Cruelty and the Beast which is really good. The new album is called Darkly Darkly Venus Aversa and Dani based the entire album on the character Lilith it really goes on to tell you a story. I tell you what I can do is give you a break down of the tracks at the end of the interview otherwise I would be here for flippin’’’ hours! (Laughter)
I see that quite a few of your studio albums have been released near Halloween. Are you guys big Halloween fans?
Yeah. But then it would feel a little weird releasing our stuff on Christmas Day, you know what I mean? We’ve been trying to get it as near to Halloween as possible.
What are your musical influences?
The first track of our new album kind of speaks for this question. This time I got more of the band members involved on the writing process to kind of see what would really come of it. I really just wanted to come with something that builds up. The first section starts off really fast then it comes to like a break down an orchestral break down then when it comes back in it goes even faster then there’s another orchestral break down then it goes EVEN faster. I wanted to really build it up. But like the first breakdown you hear you kind of think well that’s really nice. Then the second one comes in and you go that’s f*cked up. That’s weird. Ya know? I wanted it to have more of a twist to it. Each track of this album was written to stand on its own. This album has no filler tracks.
Cradle is widely known for its dark and seductive album art are you working on something called Vomitarium?
It’s a dark art project. I was doing it with a photographer named Cindy Frey. We’ve done a few images. At the moment I’ve had to put it on hold since I’ve had to relocate for the duration of the album release. I’ve done art for other bands as well.
Really, like which bands?
I’ve done album art for a UK band called HELL and some for a band called Born of Ashes.
Actually, I was in Belgium a few days ago speaking with Cindy and there is a chance of us releasing a Vomitorium book.
Do you all have a tour planned already for Darkly Darkly Venus Aversa?
In December we’re doing South America then the First of February our North American tour starts. We’re doing Mexico a few days before that actually. Hopefully Europe will be sometime around April and hit some festivals and hopefully get on a festival tour out in the states around July or August. It’s a pretty full on tour. It’s going to be good. I can’t wait to get out and start playing live again. It’s an itch in your fingers.
Any good tour stories you’d like to share with us?
Haha, Not really to be fair. Everything is like a blur. The only time I remember when something goes on on tour is when someone films it and it gets on the DVD and I stay thinking, F*ck! Did I do that?
Is there any bands or artists you’d like to collaborate with in the future?
I don’t know I’d love to work with Judas Priest or Motorhead. Actually where I’m living there’s enough room in the basement for like a drum kit and couch and I’m thinking about grabbing one of the local drummers. Because there’s like 6 or 7 bands in the neighborhood I can hear them rehearsing all the time in their basements. So I’m thinking about grabbing a drummer that I know and just having a laugh and messing around with some stuff.
For Cradle fans that don’t know, you all released a movie entitled Cradle of fear in 2001. Do you have any film projects in the future?
Hopefully. Nothing concrete at the moment. We’ve mostly been concentrating on our albums. I personally would like to get a big ass budget to do like some really good stuff. It’s not that the film wasn’t good it was more of a niche b-movie, splatter stuff. I’d like to get something more along the lines of proper horror. There’s always talk of stuff but when stuff materializes you will know.
You have reached an impressive 20 year run. Like many bands you’ve had creative differences. How do you work through them for the newer albums?
Well there wasn’t really many differences. When you write you have a core person or 2 core people for the writing side of it everyone sends their stuff to me. If they want to contribute they send stuff to me because I’m the one that arranges everything. So we don’t really get any hassle any more. I mean if you say you really don’t like something instead of saying well f*ck you it’s staying we usually say like lets try something else here or no I prefer the original version. It’s just a case of give and take.
SONG MEANINGS & BRAKDOWNS
A Candlelit Album
This album is Cradle at our most sinister and darkened fairytale; a gothic horror- themed slay-ride of fervour and perversion: yet amidst the orchestral melodrama and lush, cinematic production, there sits stalwart, a ravening beast of furious riffing, flesh ripping vocals and monstrous, unstoppable percussion.
‘Darkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa’ is without doubt the fastest and most brutal album we’ve created to date. As an acquaintance of the band so aptly noted, this is like ‘Iron Maiden on crack in a graveyard of angels!’, and with an as-near-as-dammit release date of All Hallows Eve 2010, we are snarling at the leash to get out to all our fans across the world and play this shit live.
Long live the ‘Filth!
———————
The Cult Of Venus Aversa
‘Midnight strikes, the candles sputter
Muttering their reeking spells
I snuff their tongues, my heart a-flutter
These words I speak are gates to Hell’
The storm-clouds open on our story and the curse is running.
An unseen narrator casts a sinister warning of a dark secret that has aligned itself within the mythistory of this tale. It is a story that he alone must tell to be rid of it’s terrible curse…
Knight Templar, deserting the Ninth crusade to pillage their way slowly back to England, purchase feudal land with their ill-gotten treasures in the county of Shropshire. There, beyond the forest to the east of the village of All Hallows Fair, they build their religious stronghold, a vile and despicable sect dedicated to the worship of the desert god Baphomet. It is during one of the nightly orgies in homage of the beast that an ancient and far greater Evil is unleashed into their temple, that of the thing’s Mother, lured from the abyss by rites of lust and degradation ultimately, a virgin sacrifice.
Wrapping her sumptuous legs around their pagan idol, Lilith; Adam’s first consort and mistress of Hell, slithers from centuries of imperious disinterest, to once again inflict her whims upon an unsuspecting world…
One Foul Step From The Abyss
The Feast of Fools, 1308.
Time crawls on and Lilith’s presence hangs like a brooding cancer in the air.
Lurid manifestations, strange howling in the woods, a deep sense of foreboding and dark erotic dreams all beset the village whilst, reclining in her inner sanctum of black fire and marble, Lilith is worshipped and obeyed.
That is until another girl, a daughter of the local gentry is abducted, for only then, with a large armed force provided by King Edward II, will a torch-lit mob dare to march on the Templar’s lair. What they discover there unhinges even the most stoic of minds; a harem of both male and female devotees, all in midnight obeisance to a beautiful vampyric creature that shines like the stars. A bloody pitched battle ensues, but the Templar stronghold is eventually overrun by the sheer mass of opposing numbers.
The Cloud-racked moon above turns a full shade of murder.
All are put to the sword, including most of the servants, but of Lilith herself, there remains no earthly trace of her body. Convinced she has been driven back to the abyss that spawned her, the King gives over the deeds to the already hefty coffers of the Church.
So begins the nightmare…
The Nun With The Astral Habit
Years have passed.
All Hallows Fair.
A convent for Carmelite Nuns resides where the Templars once worshipped their illicit Queen, now widely regarded as The Retreat Of The Sacred Heart. Presiding over this small but elegant part of Eden, is the Abbess Dubois, strict of rule in her quest for perfection under the eyes of God. Her object of concern comes from a new arrival to the convent, Victoria Varco, heiress to a Moldavian fortune, who, despite suffering many terrible deeds, including the murder of her lover and their ill-gotten child, has been forced into a life of celibacy for blackening her family name.
The Abbess will not tolerate her darkening the peace of her halls, attributing to her the growing sense of unease and midnight activity in the convent, and punishes her accordingly, privately relishing the mental torments of the captive girl. She is regularly flogged red.
For Victoria, terrible cloistered dreams swiftly turn to nightly flights of erotic fantasy, at first indulging herself with a beautiful mystery woman, and then, like tumbling further down the rabbit hole, as the bejewelled woman herself, making passionate love on faraway dunes to a shadowy stranger.
In truth the woman is Lilith, attracted to Victoria’s darkness in this restored oasis of light, and through sexual union with her lover Lucifer, the Crawling Chaos, she makes fertile the seed of his design, and the girl wilfully becomes her pawn.
So, lost to her new-found nocturnal pleasures, Victoria, the young, frightened Nun, bequeaths her hand in acquiring a powerful Templar treasure, a golden necklace located somewhere in the labyrinthine convent walls.
Retreat Of The Sacred Heart
Delirious with ecstasy, the heady opiate of Victoria’s new obsession finds her growing further from her sisters of small mercies. High on September fires that have burnt away all restraint, she is unrepentant and alive again, a wicker-man resurrection in the broken piece of mirror that is her only possession. Vanity becomes her nemesis, for there, in the hungry whirlpools of her eyes, Lilith too gazes out upon a new world.
A world ripe for subservience and domination.
In the grip of inner fervour and the nights spent at the bosom of a goddess, a dangerous romantic liaison flares up between Victoria and a man who comes from the village to aid the Nuns with the labour of harvest. His name is Isaac, strong and handsome, but a mute, though his tongue does provide her with other uses.
Ancient as the mountains she might be, Lilith is not a patient Mistress. Railing in her onyx astral palace and withholding her favour, Victoria is pressed to enlist Isaac in the search for the missing Templar necklace, eventually pushing him to the lavish bed of the not-so-angelic Abbess Dubois.
With the threshold between worlds grown to its thinnest and the late Summer air laden with vice, Lilith knows her time is at hand, Victoria her host, all the more beautiful for her sweetened infidelities.
The gates to hell are truly opening.
The Persecution Song
Victoria’s erratic behaviour is unhinging obedience in the convent. In the cloisters Demons are envisaged everywhere. A purging of religious fervour ensues. Blame descends on the strange, once-melancholic Nun, whose nightly rites of sexual passage have been observed and at times, similarly enjoyed. Her hormonal impurity is seen as a beacon for sin, an invitation to past masters, thus in order to subdue the brushfire panic rising in her flock’s throat, the Abbess orders Victoria’s midnight abduction.
Dragged to the miserichord drenched in profanity, she is stripped and forced to endure all manner of degradation before the real torture begins. The pain drives her to the very edge of sanity, the complicit Nuns under Dubois’ instruction, fuelled by tales of what the convent used to host, are fanatic and utterly methodical in her abuse. They seek to drive the demon from her.
Still Victoria is resolute. She will not break on their wheels and will not give up her secrets to the needles or fire. Foul are the retorts that fly from her mouth. The mouth of a whore. Her Goddess taught her well, the exorcism fails and possession remains.
Not wishing for her perfect rule to become unstitched, the Abbess finds herself with precious little choice. Blazing with zealotry, Victoria is taken out to the blasted oak, a site of ancient punishment and is hanged from its leering boughs. Lightning tears the sky, the convent’s dark windows stretch and laugh and the small conspiratorial group hasten back through the night to their chambers, leaving Isaac, (oft seen as a mute, pliant fool by the nuns), entrusted with the digging of a grave, unaware of his forbidden feelings for the girl. Obsessed with the beautiful dead nymph, he is heartbroken by events and through a silent flood of tears, swears swift and fastidious revenge.
Deceiving Eyes
A love song. Of sorts.
An unearthly storm ensues, as if the heavens themselves are condemning the tragic actions of this night. Isaac, stealing from the convent under cover of the tumult and with his heart fit for breaking, hurries to free Victoria of her grave, cursing the firmament and heaving her makeshift coffin through the ensuing sludge to the Chapel, where he might once more gaze upon her Angelic face.
He regales the corpse with kisses and regrets, pledging his love and recalling one late Summer day when he tended her weeping wounds after a particularly savage flogging. He forgives her her trespasses despite the suspected catalogue of sins, believing her affection for him shone far above that of her master, the Devil’s.
And with that he produces a golden necklace, two writhing snakes within whose opposing fangs resides an upturned crescent moon. It is the Templar treasure Victoria and her Mistress so badly sought that he gently clasps about her cold, dead, slender neck.
As he sits and holds her lifeless form by candlelight, admiring the splendour of the treasure against her flesh, he is transfixed by her beauty and the smooth sumptuous curves the lightning that cuts through the window highlights beneath her gossamer winding shroud. Thunderstruck, an act of utter madness ensues, as possessed by a sudden raging desire, he falls upon her, making love to her corpse in a frenzy of blissful abandonment.
Suddenly on the cusp of his passion, Victoria’s eyes flicker open with a dark renewed light as she grips him tight and starts working towards her own sinful pinnacle.
And those eyes do not lie…
Lilith, Queen of Hell, is reborn.
Lilith Immaculate
A Hymn to her.
Fire is all around. The belfry is in uproar as Isaac and what was once Victoria consummate her carnal empowerment, him a bedazzled fawn, her a bucking silhouette set to flame. As she explodes she drops to suck hungrily from his throat, and swiftly sated on fresh blood, her transformation from girl to Goddess is finally complete.
She is naked save for the necklace, yet it fails to stop her from entering the now-burning convent and murdering every last Nun with unimaginable cruelty.
A true martyrs death awaits the Abbess though. She is impaled upside-down, arse to mouth and her face set aflame. A very fitting end.
Fleeing the carnage in a delirium of ecstasies as the villagers of All Hallows Fair once again pour to atrocity, they eventually take shelter from the rain in a barn far from the pyre that is now the Retreat Of The Sacred Heart.
It is here that Lilith addresses the bewitched mute, finally revealing her true nature, that only now powerful enough to seek her interests in the affairs of mortal kind, she has arisen, having waited for decades to engage the perfect host for her re-emergence.
Victoria had been steered to become her private vessel. It was only a question of time and the retrieval of the hidden Templar necklace that prevented her from splintering the mirror back into this world. And now she is free, Isaac will learn to worship at her feet, as she intends the whole of existence to. In return, he will have for a lover a Goddess, a woman of unimaginable power and beauty, and together they shall walk the world a blaze of razors.
Isaac is far from disagreement, seduced by a voice that is part precious jewels and shimmering, ethereal fire.
A new Eden awaits….
The Spawn Of Love And War
The narrative soon drifts to being the precedence of Isaac and his poetic rantings on Lilith’s power.
Infatuated by his consort, his tale is a constant tirade of bewitchment and worship, of living in the sinuous shadow of the snake, of being subject to all of life’s most ardent seductions: Wealth, power, youth and beauty, whilst hers is a story that reveals the origins of the treasure so profusely sought after and stolen from the Abbess by Isaac’s very own prying hands.
Legend speaks of the necklace being given as a wedding gift to Harmonia, the first -born child sprung from the illicit union between Aphrodites ( the Goddess of Love) and Ares (the God of War), by Aphrodite’s estranged and jealous husband, the blacksmith Hephaetus. It was forged to keep the wearer eternally beautiful and young, yet it came at a terrible price; all owners were smitten with a curse that decimated countless generations. During their retreat from the Holy land, the Templars settling at All Hallows Fair raided a temple at Delphi in Greece, where the necklace was taken from an elite sect of priests, sworn at all costs to its protection. For the Knights it was considered just another trinket of war, such was the Templar’s sole interest in the continued praise of their idol Baphomet.
Lilith’s prize is an eternity of youth and beauty, Isaac’s is the return of his speech and a world at his feet. It is not all bad, he sits at her breast through the machinations of her growing empire, documenting her ascent to the favour of world leaders, and the sole head of countless illicit occult organisations.
Her voice is like a serpent behind everything, privy to every carnal desire, every sin, and therein lies is a portent to the weak. Isaac speaks of the many seductions of her lascivious power and it is a warning levelled intently at the listener.
Her nightmare kingdom is arriving….
Harlot On A Pedestal
Documenting the centuries in her opiate embrace, Isaac has seen a great many things that has sent his mind reeling; horrible, disturbing things that are at times at odds with his spellbound infatuation with Lilith. He has witnessed the incredible power of seduction, of greed, of manipulation, not only from the Goddess, but of the mortal entourage which slathers about them, craving her indulgence, across all continents. He recalls ancient memories of Eden before the Fall, of Sheba, of Egypt, of court life and favours beyond physical and spiritual compare.
He drinks the champagne, one eye on the wine turning black. On the swell of her New Order.
Warm waves of desire wash over him in her presence, but also undulating pangs of nausea and regret. The eternal, dreamlike party is taking its toll as Lilith dominates more and more, high-heel deep in enslavement and depravity, yet her very presence fills him like a sweet caressing drug. His life unfolds as a conflict of opposites, he is madly in thrall to the Goddess, yet a hammered conscience finds him growing weary of the orgies, the intrigue, the bloodlust and riches.
Of indeed worshipping such a creature.
Forgive Me Father (I Have Sinned)
Isaac seeks repentance, begging forgiveness from a higher counsel for the life he has led in Lilith’s arms, for he has felt the bitter prick of thorns in her garden of delights. He is only too aware of the coming storm, of the disaster facing Mankind once her blasphemous dark age has been fully ushered in.
In his heart a battle rages between good and evil, love and hate. He succumbs and then triumphs, rises and falls on the tide of her voluptuous whims. Lilith’s voice is sweet and anodyne. She is the ultimate seductress and with her words, the honey dripping from her fluid lips, she has always managed to sway his aversions,
to sustain his purpose with her.
This is a song for anyone crushed beneath the heavy burden of shame. Is guilt so justifiable if one loves the addition? Or is the love affair with danger worth the guilt?
Beyond Eleventh Hour
Exultation!
The eleventh hour, representing the fate of Humankind one foul step from the abyss, passes by as Lilith unveils her Satanic mandate. The path is well and truly paved for the ascension of her true consort, Samael, Lucifer, Choronzon; the Devil himself.
The future is also revealed to Isaac, a road on which he believes he is neither slave nor saviour, but Master of his own destiny, whilst the Goddess becomes all the more maniacal, terrifying in her address and aspect. Torn between two worlds, his mind, already hardened from centuries of indulgence, observes his Mistress aloft on the cusp of her final victory, all pawns in place and no place for him.
He goes before her throne on the astral plane, pledging his eternal love, but no longer his servitude to her unholy cause, leaving swiftly as her storm clouds roil in turmoil behind him.
It is here that we are led to believe Isaac’s part in this story ends, whether by the Demon’s charity or via her vengeful wrath. The truth is far darker, for his story has merely been a ruse to bide time for Lilith to sink her poisoned teeth into the listener’s psyche, for unbeknownst, she has always been one kiss shy from your throat. And now that she has you wrapped in her possession, she will come for you in dreams, making you one of her many sordid playthings. It is then that she’ll reap your soul, for Isaac is the narrator of this story, her herald and her consort.
And amassing their children, their perverse kingdom of darkness is hastening to arrive.
‘Midnight strikes, the candles sputter
Muttering their reeking
spells
I snuff their tongues
my heart a-flutter
These words I speak
are gates to Hell’
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