UK icons of extreme metal, Cradle Of Filth have arrived in Australia for their first tour in the country in 5 years in support of their latest album “Cryptoriana – The Seductiveness Of Decay”. We talk to guitarist Richard Shaw who joined the band in 2014 to discuss the tour and how he has settled in with the band in the last 4 years.
Andrew: So I hear you just landed in Australia a day or 2 ago right?
Richard: Yeah landed at about 6 O’clock yesterday morning so the jetlag is real right now but it’s all good.
Andrew: Have you had any time to check out the sights and all that?
Richard: Yeah had a day off yesterday, slept when we could but went down to the Harbour and went to Frankies Pizza to check out some bands and some pinball so it was all good.
Andrew: Cool so obviously you have the tour kicking off this week, it’s good to see you in the country. I guess this will be your first time with Cradle Of Filth in Australia.
Richard: Yeah it is! Last time Cradle toured was 2013 so Ashok [Marek Smerda, guitars] and I joined the band February of the next year so we are really looking forward to it, for both of us it’s our first time in Australia.
Andrew: Should be a fun one then! You’ve been on the road since the new album came out last year, how’s it been going so far?
Richard: All the shows have been amazing! It’s been a pretty full on tour which kind of started with Loud Park festival in Tokyo in October and then we did a UK run in October/November, took a break in December and we’ve pretty much been on the road since January doing Europe, Russia, Israel, South America, North America, we just did Phillipines, japan, Indonesia and we’re now in Australia doing the final 5 shows before a couple of weeks off. So it’s been pretty crazy but all the shows have been absolutely amazing, the fans have been great.
Andrew: Just to quickly backtrack there, Phillipines I’ve never seen a show in that part of the world. What’s it like there with the fans?
Richard: The fans are really awesome, they’re really passionate but I don’t know if it’s the festival we played as it’s such a long festival with hot weather, they kind of seemed a little bit subdued. Between songs they were like, ‘Yay’ but there wasn’t much movement but I think it’s because it’s such a long day at the festival. But we’ve never done headlining shows in the Phillipines, it’s always been Pulp Summer Slam festival and it seems for every band that plays the fans conserve their energy a bit but you can tell they’re passionate and you meet them before and after a show and they’re just so excited that you are there so it makes bands to make the effort to go over there.
Andrew: I assume you’ve also been playing a lot of the new album stuff, how much material can we expect in Australia off the Cryptoriana album?
Richard: Well we’ve been playing 2 or 3 songs depending on how we feel on that particular night for Cryptoriana. We do about an hour and 40 minute set spanning pretty much all of Cradle’s back catalogue and because it’s the 20th anniversary of “Cruelty And The Beast” as well, there’s a little bit more of an onus on that. So between “Cruelty And The Beast” and “Cryptoriana” they get a cut of the lime light and then a little bit of everything else in between so it’s a pretty full on show for us.
Andrew: That must be a balancing act to sort of pick a couple of songs from each era or album from Cradle. Is that difficult to pick out what songs you want to play?
Richard: It is difficult because we want to please the diehard fans but you also gotta please the casual fans who maybe only know a few songs and only dipped their toe into the band so to speak. There’s certain songs obviously that we have to play, the fans will probably riot if we didn’t play it [laughs] or we get the internet trolls who go, ‘I can’t believe they played this’. But we also need to please the diehard fans and I think we’ve got them pretty well on this tour, it’s pretty much the same set through the world tour but everywhere we’ve gone people have been very excited to hear very obscure songs that fans have been wanting to hear for a long time. Certain songs in particular as soon as I joined the band I was like, ‘So when are we going to play this song?’ ‘Er I don’t think it’s going to happen’, and we’re playing those kind of songs so it’s a pretty great feeling.
Andrew: When you joined the band were you familiar with their stuff? Were you a fan at all?
Richard: I was more of a casual fan. I kind of knew a lot of their stuff because around the time that “Cruelty And The Beast” and “Midian” came out, a lot of the videos were on the music channels in the UK plus my brother is a diehard fan so he kind of freaked out when I got the call to join the band. So I kind of knew the material by default, I was playing the Beatles and Queen in my bedroom and then in the bedroom next to me which was my brothers, he would be blasting Cradle Of Filth. So it was just a case of literally learning how to play the parts but I kind of knew the songs pretty well.
Andrew: So some of your influences then, was it not on the extreme metal side of things? Were you more of a classic rock type of guy?
Richard: Well I was kind of a session player and even growing up I was into all kinds of bands, specifically all these bands that seemed to meld all these different styles like the Beatles and Queen which were two of the most obvious ones. But then when I really started picking up the guitar it was more bands like Metallica, Slipknot, Disturbed, that era of the late 90’s and early 2000’s where I was really starting to form my own style. Then things started getting heavier definitely but it was really only when I joined Cradle Of Filth that I was really thrust into the extreme metal side of things. It had always been there and I had always been into bands like Pantera and stuff but it was more the commercial end of metal I would say that I was into but during this band I kind of got a crash course in more obscure bands and I became a fan of those bands by default just hanging around it for so long.
Andrew: How have the fans been responding to your introduction into the band? Have they been embrasive of you being a part of Cradle Of Filth?
Richard: They have been, I’ve been in the band 4 years now and 2 albums so I like to think I’ve proven my worth with the band. Especially when I first joined it was a case of I came in to finish off an album cycle, they had like a month long tour in Europe and I was just brought in as a session guy with only a few weeks to learn the set. We only had a couple of rehearsals and then right off to Munich to start the tour so I only really got to know the band and know the guys on that tour who was pretty much a steep learning curve. But it seemed like from day one a lot of the fans embraced, obviously there’s always going to be fans who want lineups to stay a certain way and wants the members to stay in the band but you have to respect the wishes of those people who decide to leave and I think I’ve been very lucky in the sense that fans seemed to have embraced Ashok and I into the band. It feels really good right now in Cradle because it just feels really good musically, live it feels good, creatively it feels good and we seem to have a really good relationship with the fans.
Andrew: Well the last 2 albums, “Cryptoriana – The Seductiveness Of Decay” and “Hammer Of The Witches” in my personal opinion have been some of the best material Cradle has done in quite some time and I’m wondering if maybe that was because of the new members including yourself. Have you had much of an influence as far as writing and maybe some of the things that you were doing in the studio at all?
Richard: Oh definitely! When we came in to do “Hammer Of The Witches”, Ashok and I had only been in the band only a few months before we asked, ‘Ok now we’re going to start writing the new album, what have you got?’ And it was very hands on from all of the members, it wasn’t a case of this person does all the writing and this person does this. It was very evenly split and I think that’s what made “Hammer Of The Witches” and “Cryptoriana” work and from what I gather, there’s certain members in the past that were like, ‘I do the majority of the writing’ and some band members only seemed like live players. That kind of went out the window as soon as “Hammer Of The Witches” was written and everybody contributed to both “Hammer Of The Witches” and “Cryptoriana” which is where I think that lies the success, it wasn’t a case of one or two people writing the whole album, it was all six of us. Especially with “Cryptoriana” we were almost brave enough because we all knew each other better after being in the band for 3 years as opposed to a few months. So you could learn which buttons to push and go, ‘Well that’s cool but I know we can get better’, and that’s why “Hammer Of The Witches” and “Cryptoriana” was almost like a tip of the hat to old school Cradle stuff with interweaving guitar melodies and stuff which excites guitar players like me and Ashok but you also have the atmosphere of the old stuff without feeling nostalgic and I think that’s because of the chemistry of the current six members.
Andrew: Yeah I definitely agree with that, I definitely hear a lot of the old school elements in there. I remember talking to Dani [Filth, vocals] last year about the album and he was saying it felt more cohesive to him and I agree, it did feel more collaborative on writing the new songs. I guess you must be really happy with how these albums have turned out so far.
Richard: Definitely, we were surprised. Especially with me doing “Hammer Of The Witches” back in 2015, I had only been in the band a year when it had been released and I had never done anything on that kind of scale before. I had my own bands and own little projects and stuff but obviously nothing that was being released worldwide on this kind of scale with a big tour to follow it and so the fact that it was accepted by the fans and critics was – not a surprise because we had faith in it – but we were shocked at how well it was received. And when “Cryptoriana” seemed to take that and surpass it, it was an amazing feeling but it does put the pressure on for the third album [laughs]. How are we going to top this, where are we going to go with it from now on. But like I say it does feel good, fans seem to have received it well and the future is exciting.
Andrew: We are looking forward to hearing these songs live. Personally I’ll be seeing you in Perth on the last show of the tour and this will be my first time seeing Cradle Of Filth live.
Richard: Oh really? Wicked.
Andrew: Do you have any messages for the fans before the first show kicks off?
Richard: All we can say is thank you for the support, thank you for being patient. I know it’s been 5 years since the last Cradle Of Filth tour, we are all very excited to be here and we can’t wait for the tour to kick off and party with everybody. So it’s going to be a great run of shows!
Destroy All Lines and Chugg Entertainment present:
CRADLE OF FILTH AUSTRALIA TOUR DATES:
Wednesday 9 May – Academy Club, Canberra
Thursday 10 May – The Triffid, Brisbane
Friday 11 May – 170 Russell, Melbourne
Saturday 12 May – Metro Theatre, Sydney
Monday 14 May – Capitol, Perth – 18+
www.tickets.destroyalllines.com
