British extreme metal veterans CRADLE OF FILTH have released a new single. “Malignant Perfection” arrives just in time for the Halloween season, haunting with eerie keys, vampiric atmosphere, intricate riffs and revered frontman Dani Filth‘s iconic soaring vocals. The track is accompanied by a deliciously dark new official music video, which promises to be only the first of several upcoming visual delights brought to you by CRADLE OF FILTH as they creep closer to the release of their 14th full-length album and Napalm Records studio debut.
Dani Filth divulges about the track and video: “Our new single and video, ‘Malignant Perfection’, is our horrific homage to All Hallows Eve, as embodied by the female deification of evil. It is a perfect musical accompaniment to the spirit of the witching season; invoking dark, Autumnal splendor and celebrating the time when the thin line between life and death is at its most tenuous and the denizens of the otherworld seek to break the veil into ours.
“The video, directed by the imitable Vicente Cordero and featuring the creative masterstrokes of one Missy Munster, is a playground of seductive darkness rife with malicious monsters and cryptid creations, all vying voraciously for the viewer’s eternal soul.
“This comes at a perfect juncture for the Halloween period and our ‘By Order Of The Dragon’ U.K./European Autumn tour. It also arrives on the back of a sensational collaboration with massive fashion label Vetement and also Blackcraft Clothing, and in the fiery wake of a successful sold-out Australian tour.”
In a recent interview with Jorge Botas of Portugal’s Metal Global, Dani said that “Malignant Perfection” is “the first of a few singles before the [new CRADLE OF FILTH] album drops at the end of March, beginning of April.”
Regarding how he thinks fans will react to the new CRADLE OF FILTH material, Dani said: “I think they’re gonna love it. It’s just part of the evolution of CRADLE. I mean, people ask me to describe it and it’s very hard to describe it. I’m not gonna say, ‘You know what? This is our ‘Cold Lake’,” referencing CELTIC FROST‘s much-maligned 1988 album. “It’s just the next evolutionary step for CRADLE. It’s got everything. There’s a lot of things that hark back atmospherically and indeed musically in places to early CRADLE stuff. But then there’s a lot of very modern CRADLE. It’s got everything.”
Asked if it is still important for him and his CRADLE OF FILTH bandmates to make new music to challenge themselves, Dani said: “I don’t think it’s about challenging ourselves. It’s just finding an outlet for all this pent-up emotion. We’re not gonna be stopping with this record. The reason this record and the last record were slightly delayed was obviously because we had that fucking great pandemic happen. We’re actually writing new material now. We’re trying to speed up the process. So we’ll have a new record in ’27, beginning of ’27, if not sooner. But, obviously, there are events and especially milestones as well. So it’s very important not to overcook the pudding and do too much and dilute. And everything we do, we wanna make it as good as possible. We don’t release an album until we’re happy with it.”
Dani continued: “People are gonna love the production on this record. The production is fucking amazing. And it’s got everything. It’s got some really catchy songs. It’s got some really — well, even the songs that are catchy have really fucking heavy parts in them. And catchy doesn’t necessarily mean not extreme. So, yeah, it’s another CRADLE OF FILTH record, but it’s more than just another CRADLE OF FILTH record. It’s another milestone.”
This past May, Filth told Australia’s Heavy about the progress of the recording sessions for the band’s follow-up to 2021’s “Existence Is Futile” album: “We’ve already done our [collaborative] track with [pop superstar and noted CRADLE OF FILTH fan] Ed Sheeran, although that’ll be probably coming out on the special edition of the new album, but I can’t really talk much more about that, all legalities and what have you.”
He continued: “The album we started [in] July [2023], and our record company was, like, ‘Why are you taking so long?’ It’s, like, ‘Well, because we’re on tour.’ We started the album [and then] we literally went off on tour for two months. So, yeah, we’ve been very, very busy.”
Asked about the musical direction of the new CRADLE OF FILTH material, Dani said: “It’s a step on from the last record. Same production values, same producer, although we always approach it from a different way, so it does sound a lot different. I can’t go too much into it because no matter what I say, it’s not really gonna justify or do do justice to the tracks on there. It’s very hard to explain. It’s got [elements of] ‘Dusk… And Her Embrace’ vibe-wise. Vocally, it’s a bit of everything. It’s an aggressive record. It’s a very catchy record. Yeah, it’s just something that’s gonna really please our fans. We’ve worked very hard on it. And the last record was received really well, ‘Existence Is Futile’. It’s an advancement from that. But it’s not because I’m being told, ‘Keep it calm. You can’t talk about the record yet.’ It’s very difficult to talk about something that’s got so much in it.”
Last year, CRADLE OF FILTH released its first live album in over 20 years, “Trouble And Their Double Lives”, via Napalm Records. The LP was recorded between 2014 and 2019 at different performances in the USA, Europe, Australia and beyond during the band’s “Cryptoriana” world tour and dates following. Produced, mixed and mastered by Scott Atkins at Grindstone Studios, with recording captured by Danny B, the effort not only featured a slew of fan favorites encompassing the band’s discography but also two bonus tracks and two entirely brand new songs, “She Is A Fire” and “Demon Prince Regent”.
Asked in an interview with Decibel if the two new songs on the record indicate what the next CRADLE OF FILTH album will sound like, Dani said: “Maybe a little bit but no. It’s pretty hard to explain, I can’t really talk about it. The new album has a ‘Dusk… And Her Embrace’ vibe to it. But no, we moved on from that. We started writing as a collective after that, these were stopgap songs that originally were intended toward a new album but because of the pandemic, it delayed everything and they found themselves out there. We just thought it was best to put them on the new record.”
He added: “A record takes up so much of your time. It’s a monument to a band’s career, a lot of effort gone into it, a lot of time gone into it. It deserves its own sort of place and each album will have its own unique identity that’s in place due to whatever outside due influence is happening at the time. People in the band, when they recorded, there’s so many things that determine what an album’s about. Of course each and every one is hopefully going to have a very strong and different identity to the previous one and also the future one.”
In May 2023, Dani was asked by BLABBERMOUTH.NET if he envisions the next CRADLE OF FILTH studio album staying in the same vein as “Cryptoriana” or “Existence Is Futile”. He responded: “It’s not going to be a million miles away from that. I’ve been working on some of the material today. We’re putting the finishing touches on the songs we’re going to record, whether all of them make the grade or not. It has a ‘Dusk… And Her Embrace’ vibe to them. Musically, it plays across ‘Dusk’ and ‘Midian’, but lyrically, and the vibe of it, it has a ‘Dusk… And Her Embrace’ feel to it. I don’t know why. History repeats itself. Maybe it’s because we wrote ‘Dusk’ around this particular time of year, but it has that vibe. It sounds great, but I would say that, wouldn’t I?”
Photo credit: Roberto Diaz