Rocking the Cradle of Filthy Lucre

by deadseraph

Cradle of Filth. Okay, now that I’ve got your attention I’ll get on with it, They’re like that though, CoF, they typify the whole love/hate thing. You’ve probably made up your mind one way or the other by now. I have: I love them. That’s been my feeling from the start, and I’ll stick to it.

I suppose I could bore you by talking incessantly about their music, but that is not actually what I want to discuss. If you want to know about their music then go out and buy an album or five. What’s that? You’re broke? Well, download it nimrod...

But I digress. What I want to talk about are attitudes towards artists - like CoF - who dare to combine the dark, gothic/romantic and religious themes in their music with a sense of humour, and manage to make some filthy lucre on the side. (Sorry, did I say religious? Better make that pseudo-religious, because anyone who truly believes in any kind of godly being in this era is a fool. Sorry all who disagree, but it is time to wake up and take responsibility for ourselves!) It is a dangerous realm to inhabit, that place where an artist or group assumes the right to play the game tongue in cheek; an invitation to critics and peers, one that says ‘ridicule and scorn me at every opportunity!’

With CoF it seemed that as their musical style developed into something more pleasing to the ear, their sense of humour and irony came under fire (it became more obvious, though it certainly already existed), and the inevitable cries of ‘They are selling out!’ could be heard. Well, I fucking hate that, for a start. The only thing wrong with ‘selling out’ is the perception that a lot of people in the underground have of it. Are you saying that these people don’t have a right to make a living? Should they be subject to your life values, just because you choose to live like a piece of shit? There is nothing wrong with the allure of cold hard cash, my darklings, it is what makes this rotten world go around. Most who complain of ‘sell outs’ are just jealous, and (although I hate the term) it is ‘tall poppy syndrome’ at its purest form.

Not taking yourself too seriously, coupled with a little bit of ironic humour shifts units, it would seem. This is no revelation. Just think of Marilyn Manson, Monster Magnet, The Misfits - hey they all start with M, um, anyway you get the picture, many bands play and have played on the dark alternative/goth/metal side of the tracks, not taking themselves too seriously, or at least allowing a bit of irony to slip in. And hey, if Robert Smith can learn to laugh anyone can.

My not so humble opinion is that humour in music is a fantastic gift, if correctly tempered with talent. However, there are plenty of serious folks out there who detest it, particularly in gothic and metal circles. Cof get a lot of criticism from their black metal peers (who in fact would argue that they were not CoF’s peers), there have been claims that they are not the real thing, that they in fact are a pox on the face of black metal and are a total joke.

Well then, riddle me this, Batman - Which is funnier? The fact that the well educated Dani Filth and his cohorts manage to create for us intelligent, stunning, stimulating, technically brilliant, marvellously produced, Gothically packaged music, delivered with tongue firmly in Satan’s cheek or that a bunch of long haired Viking nuts - whose music, let’s face it, is also excellent if you dig that sound, which I certainly do - wander around Scandinavia trying to burn down stone churches, murdering each other and praying to Fenris the wolf. (Exaggerate? Who me?)

I know who has got me rolling around on the floor, splitting my sides with laughter.