Interview by: Laurens Timmer
Text written by: Sanja de Vries
Photo's by Milou de Zwart

November 12th, Tilburg



It was the 12th of November, the day of the Cradle of Filth concert in the 013 in Tilburg.
This afternoon it would finally happen, Laurens would have an interview with Paul Allender at 17:20. We had to drive all the way from Hoorn to Tilburg so we decided to drive early and not come late at the interview. Unfortunately it turned out to be driving with 160 kh over the highway to make it for the interview on time, because we had a terrible traffic-jam near Amsterdam and Utrecht. When we arrived at the 013(the Venue for tonignt) they were still sound checking so a little luck for us. At 18:45 Laurens was taken into the secret chambers of the backstage area to take the interview…

"Well first of all nice to meet you here".
"Nice to meet you also".

"The first and most burning question, why does Cradle of Filth often change it’s bandmembers?"
"Uhm well at the end of the day it’s like the bandmembers we’ve had in, they liked the idea of Cradle of Filth. But myself and Dani, we’ve got a high level of sort of working. We work on the band 24/7 all the time. And because we do it we expect somebody else to do it, which is only fair. I think there is a lot of people especially in the band or who have been in the band, just can’t handle it. It’s a lot of pressure for them."

T"he new album Thornography, it has been released a month ago. What’s the main message behind the album?"
"There isn’t one really haha"

"Well that’s a short answer."
"It’s just basic a collection of fucking what we feel and a lot of old school influences that we grow up with as kids you know, and we wanted to bring fucking heavy metal back into the scene again because it’s gone. I mean there’s a lot of bands out there, a lot of metal bands but bands like slipknot are not heavy metal, it’s a whole other scene."

"Are you satisfied about the album? I think you do if you’re working on it 24/7."
"Oh yeah I fucking love it, I think everybody does."

"And is it what you had expected it to be?"
"Uhm to be fair, when I was writing the stuff, the music. We did not had any idea what it’s going to sound like. We just said, well ok here’s a riff, just write it and we'll see what comes out at the end. That’s why it sounds quite different. We just played and we didn’t have any vision of what it’s going to sound like."

"You’re for a long time in the band now, what’s the weirdest thing you have ever gone through during a performance?"
"Weirdest? Pff…. We had so many gigs…. Uhm… *You could almost hear his brains explode of the hard thinking* pff… well…. One thing I’ve never understood is girls throwing panty’s on stage. I really never understood that. But it was in America one time and we stood on stage, and we actually decided for a laugh, to try and get as many panty’s on stage as possible. And there were coming a few on stage and we thought, this is really surreal. It was pretty cool but it was really surreal. So we thought let’s see if we can get more panty’s on stage, so the next gig we said, ok bla… bla… bla… throw your panty’s on stage. The next thing I know is a sea of fucking panty’s coming over. Where did they come from?! But we put all the panty’s from one show, we had to put them all inside the tour bus, and they went right from the front lounge right back down the tour bus across and back up again. We had to stack them up. We had a fucking lot of them, panty’s, bra’s, everything. "

"You often design graphics for the website and edit photos, have you done a graphical education? It’s a question from Sanja because she’s doing that kind of work."
"No It’s totally self at all"

"Ok nice, well if you have any trainee post left? She would love to have it haha."
"Haha cool"

"What do you like to draw/design the most?"
"Uhm.. pretty much anything really, you know I’m doing merchandise, shirts, posters so I like anything. I’ve got some original work I’ve done on the website under my section and it’s all pretty surreal."

"And were do you get the inspiration from?"
"I don’t know it’s just the same as music, I start at one point and I just go through. The most of my work begins by, I call happy accidents. You know, messing around with Photoshop, try this, try that. Just go for it, I really don’t have any idea how it’s going to look like. I just start from a point and as long as I think it’s amazing, when I reach that point it’s cool."

"You know the result will be cool if you put all your energy in it."
"Yeah totally!"

"What does music and Cradle of Filth means to you?"
"It’s my life, absolutely my fucking life, I love it. It’s from writing the music to being on stage and do the studio, designing the merch, doing the website, doing dvd’s, I’ve done a couple of music video’s, I mean it’s really fucking everything."

"It’s just your way of living?"
"Yeah totally, couldn’t live without it."

"Wich song do you like to play the most?"
"Any song. And uhm…. Heaven Torn Asunder, definitely"

"Why is that?"
"It’s just, I don’t know… it just kicks off, when I play it I’m like, hell fucking yeah!"

"Are you never getting tired of all those interviewers and fans that all want your attention?"
"No not at all, never, it’s my job. The band has got a myspace page, I’ve got one of mine, my myspace page, so I can talk to fans. There are times when I thought I can’t be fucking bother to rehearse it anymore. And all I got to do is go in there and read the fucking comments and feel a lot better."

"Well I hope you get what you wanted to reach with the new album, bringing the metal back on stage because all the music channels like MTV it doesn’t show a lot of metal."
"No not at all, it’s rock stuff. People think it’s metal but it’s not. I’ve spoke to a couple of fans and they said oh yeah we love metalbands and stuff. So I asked do you like Iron Maiden? And Judas Priest? And they looked at me with those big eyes and gone.. o_o who? Haha"

"So you like Judas Priest?"
"Yes, yes absolutely love the band."

"And more like Iron Maiden?"
"Absolutely, when I was a kid, my bedroom was absolutely an Iron Maiden shine. It really was. I had fucking everything, all my albums stapled on the walls. Everything was Maiden pictures, I had posters on the sealing, I had fucking everything! The whole works, I even went down to record stores, you know they’ve got those big carton cut-outs? As soon as maiden had one come out I went to there straight and I said, I want that carton cut-out, and they used to save me the carton cut-outs."

"It’s nice to hear you talk about the bands that you really like, and those are also the bands that you love the most?"
"Oh no, Maiden, Priest and Motorhead, and like the old school trash metal bands especially I love destruction."

"Is there also a new DVD coming up after Thornography?"
"Ohw fuck yeah, there will be. What we doing on the moment, uhm filming in this tour. And I’m going to put together a tour diary video. And we just keep it for whatever we decide to release it."

"So that was the last question I had for you, I wish you good luck with the performance tonight."
"Thanks it will be allright, can’t fucking wait actually!"