Tirsdag d. 17. november spillede det britiske band Cradle of Filth i Pumpehuset. I denne forbindelse fik RockZeit et eksklusivt interview som vi præsenterer på engelsk for at bevare autenciteten.
Jeg har en aftale med Cradle of Filth´s manager Martin Lamb om at få et interview med et Cradle-medlem. Vi går backstage og han finder en ledig Cradle-mand frem på scenegulvet, hvor lyden er ved at blive tjekket. Jeg håber lidt på et interview med den kontroversielle frontmand Dani Filth, men han er ikke tilstede. Det bliver guitaristen Richard Shaw. Mine spørgsmål er da også vinklet til at kunne besvares af andre i bandet, så det passer fint. Fra de mørke backstage-lokaler i Pumpehuset, bliver jeg af Richard Shaw fulgt til Cradle Tour-bussen uden foran bygningen. Fed bus, hvor der også er temmelig dunkelt.
Vi sætter os ned overfor hinanden i to lædersofaer i et smalt rum, og jeg starter straks interviewet med den travle guitarist. Jeg har tit tænkt på hvordan et band som Cradle of Filth har arbejdet med ca. 20 musikere siden 1991.
Many bands learn to groove in a special way over the many years together. Has it been difficult for all the musicians in the band to rehears new stuff, and has it been difficult for at old members, suddenly to play together with new personnel?
It must be difficult for the older members. I mean Dani, and Martin our drummer, being nearly kind of veterans of the band now. The rest of us like me and Ashok, the other guitar player, we only came in in February 2014 on the last European tour and we had like 2 rehearsals and then we had to get out on tour. But it seemed to work really really well from the start, really. It didn´t seem too difficult (…)
Me and Ashok, we did a lot of homework, it paid off, and it went really well. The chemistry seems right in this band.
Lyden på studieoptagelserne
Do you consider the clean and perfect sounds that you can achieve in a advanced modern studio to be a problem for your expression in a “Filth” band?
It´s hard to say really…I´m on both sides. I like the older sounding thrash metal and black metal. You didn´t have so many trickers on the drums, the atmosphere was there, which I think is the hardest thing to replicate now; the atmosphere of the old records. Everything sounds clear, everything sounds great and everything now probably sounds how the old guys wanted it to sound, but the technology wasn´t availably back there. So I kind of see it from both sides, especially when you play kind of technical music, you wanna hear every note, you wanna hear everything. But if the atmosphere goes…then…that´s the hole point to me, you need the atmosphere. So I like to think on “Hammer of the Witches”….I like to think that we got the atmosphere as well.
Filmmusik
Do you get directly inspired from film composers in terms of expressions and tone material?
Definitely! Dani kind of kickstarts that…every time he gets ready to get on stage while he´s doing his makeup and stuff, he´s got horror movie sound tracks playing in the background. So he will be getting ready with these horror movie sound tracks, and we will have that for a bit..and then we will have some Iron Maiden, some Overkill, some Running Wild (laughing); some old school metal to get into it. But there has always been something on his IPod, like the “Dracula” soundtrack for example, and he is a bit fan of that…film score sound, the epic film scores. And I think we all got into it more or less, when we are hearing that before we go on, we kind of subconsciously taking it in, and it comes out when we write. And that´s what I think was missing from the last Cradle of Filth albums.
Kompositionsprocessen
Dani Filth have said in interviews that he can´t play the guitar at all. How does Dani contribute with ideas for tone material in the composition process?
I don´t think that he really plays an instrument. What usually happens is the rest of us will write the music first and record it. We will hash out the arrangements….more of that…less than that…and so on…we will talk about it all. And when we are happy with the music, we will give it to him and he will go away and hide himself away from the world writing his lyrics and figure out how he´s gonna do his parts…
The past works of Cradle he has actually provided like the melody or something, while he is the first to admit he can´t play an instrument. But he will play something on the piano, just playing around and all that; “that sounds cool”…and then somebody will take that and expand on it. So he does have a lot to say about the music. He is very hands-on with music even though he doesn´t play himself.
Koncepter
Do you pay a lot of attention to the work of other bands before you make concepts for a record?
We are always listening to new stuff all the time, but when it comes to the concept, like lyrically and visually, that´s more Dani´s department. Dani is very driven and focused once he got an idea in his head, he is like; “this is the direction we need to go”, and like I said before, he can help us with music. He knows what kind of thing he wants.
Progressiv metal
On “Hammer Of The Witches” there´s a lot of details in the music. Almost in the style of progressive metal. Do listen to progressive metal?
Strangely enough, all the guys in the band make fun of me because I listen to mostly progressive rock and progressive metal. I listen to every style of music imaginable, course if it has got guitar in it, I usually love it. There is always something cool on the guitar, that’s why I´m a big progressive rock fan. So I don´t think that I intentionally wrote things that where progressive. Songs just got longer and longer, and more different parts were coming in, so I guess it naturally started having this kind of progressive sound.
Top 3
Den er selvfølgelig svær at svare på, men jeg spørger til sidst Richard Shaw om hans personlige top 3 over bedste metalalbums.
Do you have personal top 3 of metal albums?
That will be completely different for all of us I´m sure. For me…Metallica “Master of Puppets”, I just remember hearing that, and I don´t think that I had heard anything like it at the time. I almost have been like 11 years old at the time. I think that´s what got me into more progressive things course of the longer songs, and because being a guitarist, the riffs was just incredible, just great songs.
Again. Personally for me; Iron Maiden “Seven Son of a Seventh Son”. Again a big concept, and I´m a sucker for concept albums. I just thought it was mind blowing…Hmm.. the last one for metal albums…I will go a little more progressive metal with it. I´m gonna go for Dream Theater´s “Scenes From A Memory”. It´s not straight up metal, but metal elements to it so….I´m sure if you ask me tomorrow it will be three completely different albums, but those 3 albums have been very very influentially for me.
Med eksempelvis nummeret “Right Wing Of the Garden Triptych” fra Cradles nye album ”Hammer Of The Witches”, er jeg ikke overrasket over at Shaw nævner ”Scenes from a Memory”. I dette nummer høres melodimæssigt en klar inspiration fra netop dette Dream Theater-album.
Jeg ønsker Shaw et godt gig, og han går tilbage til lydprøverne, mens jeg begynder at forberede mig til at høre ond ond filth-metal. Og hvis du ikke fik læst koncertanmeldelsen, kan du tjekke den ud her.
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