The road to hell, it turns out, is paved with Dropbox links. Because although Cradle of Filth may sound as though they record inside a burning cathedral, Dani Filth’s home studio is actually more of a games room – complete with a dartboard.
Across 14 studio albums, the British extreme metal veterans have crammed serrated guitars, venomous screams, blast beats and swathes of orchestration into records that often feel closer to gothic horror films than conventional metal albums.
Dani Filth’s own description is even more simple, he tells us, when we sit down to discuss how the black metal is made: “Cinematic, loud, violent, symphonic.”
The process behind that sound, however, is rather less theatrical.
Strip away the flames, elaborate stage production and decades of monstrous imagery, and Filth’s personal studio setup amounts to a microphone and laptop in a games room.
As well as the dartboard, there’s also a chess set and a Creature from the Black Lagoon head mounted on the wall, naturally.
When we ask him to choose the most important piece of equipment in this rather modest studio, Filth initially offers three possibilities.
“The microphone, I should imagine,” he says, “Or the producer – he’s always quite useful. And the coffee machine.”
One microphone in particular has recently become an obsession for the frontman: a handmade model from boutique manufacturer Soyuz.
“Oh, there’s this amazing microphone called a Soyuz,” he shares with us, “Funnily enough, it’s Russian, and it looks like a Russian church: white and gold, with a bit up here. They don’t make many of them.”
Filth does not specify the exact model, but places its value somewhere between $6,000 and $7,000. A friend owns an even rarer black design which he says is no longer being produced.
That price might be enough to make most home recordists emit a scream worthy of Cradle of Filth itself – but after using one, Filth became convinced it was worth the investment.
“It sounds so good,” he say, “I’m just about to buy one because I’ve realised I can’t live without it.”
For now, his home rig remains surprisingly minimal.
“Mine’s only really just a microphone and a laptop,” he explains. “I’m investing in one of those sound booths and everything, but it’s in a room that’s kind of a games room.”
Alongside its dartboard, chess set and collection of skateboards, the room is decorated with objects more associated with a Cradle of Filth record sleeve than a vocal booth.
“I’ve got a Creature from the Black Lagoon head cast from the actor, some horns and things like that,” Filth says, nonchalantly, “And a big picture of Triumph of Death by Pieter Bruegel. Yeah, lots of weird things.”
Cradle of Filth’s international line up means that the musicians are not always able to begin a record together in one room. Instead, the band’s epic songs often start life as files passed across borders.
“It’s quite laborious, really,” Filth admits, “We do a lot by Dropbox – formulate ideas and then meet up before a tour, or go away for a week or so, or hole up in a hotel on tour and bounce things back and forth.
“We get the producer involved. There’s never really a plan. If there was, it would be easy – and everyone would be doing it!”
It is a fragmented way of working, but perhaps an appropriate one for a band whose music has always resisted neat categorisation. Asked to pin down the Cradle of Filth sound more precisely, Filth is characteristically blunt.
“We just do our own thing and then catch the flak for it later!”
That instinct extends from the studio to the stage. A Cradle of Filth performance translates the records’ cinematic scale into flames, volume and deliciously violent spectacle… although Filth claims his position in the middle of it all makes him a poor judge of the finished production.
“I’m on the wrong side of the stage to everybody else, so I can’t really speak for myself,” he says, “You’d have to come along to the show and find out, wouldn’t you?”
One performance at Download Festival last year even became the setting for Filth to propose to his partner in front of 10,000 people. He had devised the plan only a few days earlier, hoping he could keep her side of stage until the right moment.
“I wanted to do it properly,” he shares, “I wanted to make a bit of a… something you remember it by. Like, ‘Oh, 10,000 people go, yay!’ rather than, ‘Get on with it, play another song.’
“I was worried about people shouting: ‘Boo! We wanted Principle of Evil Made Flesh!’”
Fortunately, she said yes.
Filth’s laptop remains equally important once the band leaves the studio. On the road, he uses it to watch films, write poetry and keep up with Queens Park Rangers results, “for my sins”.
His idea of touring luxury is not expensive catering or a bottomless rider, but simply having somewhere private to use it.
“I was very lucky when we toured America to have my own room on the bus,” he says. “That’s my luxury. It’s like my little bedroom, and I decorate it.
“I think that’s the height of luxury – being towed around the whole of America in your bedroom.”
His touring inventory is not all that extravagant, mind. Asked what he carries with him as we chat, he deadpans, “Half a Curly Wurly.”
Filth’s dream collaborators span the outer reaches of pop and metal. Having already recorded with Ed Sheeran, he jokes that there is nowhere higher left to go.
“Oh well, we’ve done Ed Sheeran, so I can’t think of anybody else,” he says, “That was the top.”
“We were talking about Lana Del Rey the other day,” he continues, before turning to some rather heavier possibilities. “Probably one of the classics – Bruce Dickinson, Rob Halford, King Diamond. That sort of thing.”
Tarja feat. Dani Filth – I Don’t Care is out now. Cradle of Filth are touring the US throughout September and October.
