Show & Tell - Cradle of Filth, an interview with Martin Powell

CRADLE OF FILTH
Martin Powell, 05.01.03

Cradle of Filth has just signed to a major label.

I think that falls somewhere between the rivers turning to blood and a hail of fire on my "end of western civilization" chart.

Actually, what it really means is the band finally gets a budget worthy of their aspirations. No more midi symphonies... This time around it's the real deal; a 40-piece orchestra, a 32-piece choir. And, unlike most summer blockbusters, the money is on the screen. That is, they put Sony's money where Dani's mouth is [and who knows where that is?]. The new album, "Damnation and a Day," has big, otherworldly sound.

We spoke to keyboardist Martin Powell as the band prepared for it's summer gig headlining Ozzfest's second stage.

"Cradle of filth have finally arrived at the palace of righteousness, ready to drain the blood from your face and whatever is left of your miserable pathetic carcass."

And if you were wondering where exactly the palace of righteousness is, it's right there behind that huge merch booth... Put your tongue in your cheek, Cradle is the kind of "evil incarnate" best taken with a grain of salt.

Enjoy, we did.

Show & Tell: Martin, how are you?

Martin: Very well, how are you, Scott?

S&T: Good. Thanks for taking the time out to talk to us.

M: Not a problem.

S&T: Now what do they do? A big whirlwind day where you just sit on the phone and they pass you off to people?

M: Yeh, not too bad today actually, only a couple today. I think [singer Dani Filth] gets most of the interviews.

S&T: So congratulations on the new album.

M: Thank you very much.

S&T: This is your first release on a major label.

M: Yes, it is.

S&T: How did that come about, what prompted that decision?

M: Our contract with Music For Nations [the band's label prior to Sony/Epic] was up after we'd finished "Midian" and I think we'd got to the end of them being able to push us any further. We were searching around for a few months and Sony came out of the blue. They'd seen our sort of profile and record sales previously and said, "Okay, let's give it a go." It worked out fantastically for us 'cause it gave us the budget to use stuff like the orchestra and the choir and spend longer fine tuning the material.

S&T: Did you put a vibe out there? As in, "our contract is up and we're looking around for a major?"

M: Oh yeh, yeh. I think there were some articles, etcetera in Music Week and various industry magazines and stuff, and I think Rod Smallwood, Iron Maiden's manager, he said if we ever got signed to Sony Music he'd eat his hat [laughter]. So when we did get signed our manager called him up and said, "right, Ron, buy a hat."

I think a lot of people were shocked, obviously, but I think it's working, it's working well.

S&T: So far your experience with a major has been pretty good then...

M: Absolutely, absolutely. There've been occasions where certain countries haven't known how to market or promote us because they're not familiar with a band like ours, which, I guess in comparison to other stuff, is quite extreme. So there have been a few teething problems in certain European countries just where the Sony people there are all knocking their heads around trying to figure out to market it properly. But after doing this monthlong tour we've just done, around Europe, and meeting most of the Sony people, they're all blown away by the audience attendances and everything else. It's getting there, it's getting a lot better.

S&T: Fans can be fickle, have you had to deal with any kind of backlash? Major label, they've sold out, that kind of thing?

M: I guess so, I don't really get involved with those sort of arguments. Cradle's always been surrounded by those people who are always denigrating the band like, "oh it's not this, it's not that, it's not black metal..." Who cares what it's not? At the end of the day it's just music. We just do what we do, regardless. There's are people always bitching at somebody for something and it's usually for what they're not as opposed to what they are.

S&T: People can label it black metal but there's so many other things going on.

M: Yeh, absolutely. I don't care what other people choose to call it. Fucking call it gay, rap-metal, I don't care. We're happy doing what we do and we just do what we do, it's just fucking music at the end of the day.

S&T: Talk to me about how this stuff is put together. There's so many layers and textures. How do you actually construct one of these songs.

M: Christ, well myself, Paul [Allender, guitarist] and Adrian [Erlandsson, drums] all have home studios, computer studios, etcetera. I can only speak for the way I write which is I'll sit down, program some drums on some internal samplers. I'll stick some guitars on top of that and get a decent song structure and then maybe add the keyboards etcetera on top of that. And then I'll give the stuff to Adrian and Paul, they'll have a look at it... Adrian will replace my crappy drums with some good drums [laughter], it'll get back to me, I'll make some more changes and we'll hand it around, everybody looks at it, suggests ideas. It's natural really.

Our problem more than anything is stopping ourselves putting too much stuff on there. That's the real discipline, is actually not putting too much on there. I mean I guess to most people there's a lot going on but it's actually harder to stop ourselves putting even more stuff on.

S&T: Right, where to draw the line.

M: Exactly, because we can get carried away at times. Which is good, but [we need to] impose a little discipline.

S&T: Did you know you were going to be able to use an actual orchestra before [you started writing]?

M: No, before we left and went into the studio to record a proper album, we spent months at home and then a few weeks away doing preproduction. Everything was demoed, even the instrumentals, start to finish. We had an idea that we'd like to use an orchestra and stuff. We started in the studio tracking the drums, etcetera and suggesting it. And I guess we just convinced the managing director of Epic that it was a really, really good idea and they should give us the money for it and he did. So, thankfully, it worked out really well.

S&T: You usually used just samples...

M: Yeh, usually, usually it's just the sample stuff off my computer, real strings samples, etcetera, manipulating those. But to actually fly over to Budapest and work with this orchestra, and we had a friend of ours, Don Craig, who helped sort of arrange some of the stuff and score it, and just to be able to sit there, watching them, playing the music I'd written and hearing just how good it sounded. It's just fucking, absolutely awesome.

I'll tell you we did have one thing. The demo versions of the instrumentals were a little slower, a little slower tempo. But then we started panicking when we realized that the album wasn't going to fit on a fucking CD [laughter].

We had to shave, I think we shaved about two or three minutes off the instrumentals just by speeding them up a little.

S&T: I think you can fit 78 minutes on a CD and you guys clocked in at 77 something?

M: Yeh, I know. We were really panicking about that but it worked out okay.

S&T: Now you mixed it in the States?

M: No, we actually still mixed it in the same studio we recorded in, Park Gate Studios in Bethel [England].

S&T: Scrap 60, though?

M: Yeh, but Rob and Steve [Rob Caggiano and Steve Regina, engineers/producers of Scrap 60] came over from the States. Financially-wise it was cheaper to fly them out and have them work with us in the place that we'd actually recorded. I think I would have probably preferred to actually go to another studio just for a different set of monitors, different vibe whatever, different desk but it worked out really well, really, really good. I mean Rob is great at what he does, he's got a really good ear and he's an amazingly talented guitarist as well. It worked out really well. Rob, when he first came over here, had his set of ideas and after a couple of weeks we realized it wasn't working so we sat down and said we're not into this, we're not into that, you're doing it your way so we kind of mixed it together, you know what I mean?

S&T: There's an obvious vision to what you're doing. Is the band hardcore DIY? Do you need to be involved in every facet?

M: Oh, absolutely to a certain degree. Then sometimes you're just wiped out, brain dead and you're like, "do what you fucking want." But like I said, musically or business-wise we're involved as much as possible. It's a definite vision for everybody. So when it comes to the studio, I'm there when Adrian's doing the drums down, Dan's always there, everybody's involved in every aspect of everybody else's work, including the mixing as well.

S&T: A lot of times you go into a studio and you wind up with a producer that's pretty much it's his way and you have a vision and he's got a vision and sometimes they don't mix.

M: Oh, of course. Thankfully we've never had that situation, well on this album at least because we produced it ourselves really, with help from Doug Kirk who was the engineer on "Midian." It was a very good working situation.

S&T: Headlining second stage on Ozzfest, that's a pretty big deal.

M: Especially I imagine with the Osbourne's TV show, there's probably a lot more interest this year.

S&T: Now more than ever it seems. The amount of exposure you get on second stage, the cross-pollination of fans... Do you have any expectations?

M: Not as yet because it's a new concept for us as well playing on a bill with such huge bands, huge audiences... Apart from the obvious, which is it's gonna be really great playing in front of that many people, especially that many people that maybe haven't heard us.

S&T: I imagine that your live show is quite a spectacle.

M: Well it has been, it can be, it very much depends on how much money we have left in the budget for the stage show [laughs]. There's certain limitations on the Ozzfest as well because the changeovers are gonna be so quick, between bands. So at the moment we're designing a stage show which can be built off-stage and just rolled up on stage, etcetera, and have some performance artists up there, dancers, lots of blood or whatever.

S&T: And there's some paring down that you'll likely have to do from what you're used to.

M: Yeh, of course, get rid of a few guitarists [laughter]. I'm really looking forward to it, it's going to be a unique experience. And obviously between the Ozzfest gigs, we have our own headline shows. With Killswitch Engage and Shadow's Fall. That's gonna be a good bill.

S&T: What about playing during the day?

M: That's going to be very, very strange. Even festivals in Europe are a little bit strange but a lot of them are inside, big arenas inside. Obviously the Ozzfest is going to be outside and especially at 5:00 in the afternoon when we go on, it's going to be a minimal use of the lights really.

S&T: Or none!

M: Basically, yeh. We'll have to go with lots of smoke on stage [laughs].

S&T: It's interesting to me, with your visual; the dark, evil band playing in the middle of the day in broad daylight.

M: Yeh, in the middle of the summer! Again, that's more impetus for us to put on more of a visual stage show. When people see us live in the confines of a venue, then you've got the lights and everything, we do a really good lighting design on the stage show. So we'll have to work a little bit harder visually I'm sure.

S&T: But when you do the off day shows you'll have the whole rig?

M: Yeh, we're still gonna have gear with us, lights for the other shows.

S&T: What about festivals vs clubs? The difference between playing the two.

M: Festivals are, by their very nature, lots of different bands, so the audience is always very mixed... Festivals are a big way to reach lots of other people that aren't necessarily fans of the band. I've always enjoyed playing festivals, purely for selfish reason. I meet so many people, other bands, sit down for a drink.

S&T: You guys have a decade worth of material. How do you decide what you're going to play?

M: That's a good question, we haven't yet [laughs]. There's going to be a lot of soul-searching, picking the songs we're going to play, especially given such short sets. Obviously we're going to push the new album, that's the product out there we're trying to get across to people. And then there's pleasing people, our fans as well. I don't know, we've thought about doing some of the more extreme stuff just to piss people off even more. It's a good question because we haven't even thought about that yet, it's going to be a very difficult decision.

S&T: And I would think, as well, that there's some stuff that doesn't translate well live.

M: Yeh, I've been in the band nearly three years now and we've never played... we don't know every single song that Cradle's ever written, hardly any of the people are left that wrote them [laughs], but we did go back and learn some of the older stuff and said, "it'd be fun to play this one live." When we're on our own headline shows we do swap the set list around and just dig out some old ones, new ones, etcetera.

S&T: Plus some of the lengths aren't exactly conducive to playing live.

M: It's not so much that, I mean we'll play a song like "Funeral in Carpathia," I'm not quite sure how long it is, well over seven or eight minutes, I think, and we still play that live. A lot of the longer songs didn't have a lot of variation anyway, you know like middle passages, slow, keyboards, and to be honest when everybody's on stage adrenalized you don't even notice how long a song lasts, it's like gone in an instant. Our own headline shows are fine because people want to hear everything but for a festival thing we'll have to be a little more selective, I suppose.

S&T: Thanks, Martin, I really appreciate your time.

M: Excellent, it's been a pleasure. Thanks a lot, Scott.

interview by scott sisti