Cradle of Filth – Dani Filth Talks About Diet, Upcoming New Album
The following article was originally posted over at MTV.com:
After CRADLE OF FILTH recorded all the material for their new album, Thornography, Dani “Filth” Davey ran into a major obstacle: He could growl and scream as well as ever, but no matter how hard he tried to hit a pitch or sing a passage, he sounded completely tone-deaf.
Discouraged and depressed, he started drinking heavily, but that only made him feel sicker than ever. He saw doctors, vocal coaches and dieticians, all to no avail. Davey was starting to think he was suffering a mental breakdown until the band’s producer, Rob Caggiano, recommended a homeopathist who had cured Caggiano’s life-threatening stomach parasite when he was working with BLEEDING THROUGH.
“The first thing the doctor told me was that I was going to die if I carried on with my lifestyle,” Davey said. “Then he found that I have this weird disease called candida, which sits down low in your system so it’s hard to detect, then acts as a springboard for other illnesses.”
The doctor also determined that Davey was allergic to alcohol more than a minor inconvenience for a touring musician with a strong appetite for beer. “I had to take 49 tablets made of plants for six months, and I had to limit my diet to rice cakes and mineral water.”
At first, Davey ignored the prescribed treatment and started drinking heavily again. After that spell, he decided to follow his doctor’s advice but promised to reward himself for his efforts. “I said, ‘If I get over this, I’m going to [drink again] and eat loads of cake.’ And I did. And now I can just live my life. I’ve decided that I’m keeping to this diet and once a week, I’m going to splurge and have sugar or something bad.”
While he desperately missed not being able to eat and drink like a normal heathen, Davey soon regained his health, and with it, his voice. So he flew to Millbrook Studio in upstate New York and easily recorded all the vocals for the album. “We did it [near] Alfred Hitchcock’s estate, so you can imagine how excellent the vibe there was,” Davey said.
He named the album Thornography due to the ever-present religious overtones of the disc, and also because the implied imagery reminded him of his ordeal. The LP drops October 17.
“Thornography implies a self-hurt,” Davey explained. “Mankind’s will to hurt God. It’s like being an alcoholic and knowing you’re not supposed to drink but you enjoy it so much so you do it anyway. Everything on the record has got a religious edge to it in a good or bad way. And it’s not overtly satanic because sometimes you find that the darker stuff in life exists within the people who wield the power, who are supposedly in the light.”
Sonically, Thornography strays little from CRADLE OF FILTH’s established brand of symphonic metal. Tempos vary from the slow, cinematic chug of “Rise of the Pentagram” (which features a spoken introduction by Doug Bradley, who plays Pinhead in the “Hellraiser” films) to the hellfire blaze “I Am the Thorn.”
“Much of this album is traditional CRADLE OF FILTH, just better,” Davey said. “It’s like SLAYER meets NAPALM DEATH in a vat of acid.”
(No Ratings Yet)
