CRADLE OF FILTH Had To 'Jump Through Hoops' To Make Recent North American Tour Work

CRADLE OF FILTH frontman Dani Filth spoke to Finland's Chaoszine about the band's recently completed North American tour with 3TEETH and ONCE HUMAN. "We had to jump through so many hoops to actually make the tour work," he said. "We had to get these special visas, where it's like the top five percent of people can… So we had to provide all these magazine covers from all around the world. Then we had to go to Belfest in Northern Ireland to get our visas, which is unusual, 'cause we normally go to the London one. So that was an event in itself. Eventually, we got there, and everything was cool. But then you have all these COVID protocols in place — no people backstage, everybody in masks, a lot of the venues were PCR testing people going in. So it was all a bit laborious. We were very lucky that we managed to circumvent the virus because other tours, people got sick. In fact, our support bands both had to leave the tour for 10 days — one of them didn't come back — so that was difficult."

He continued: "What happens when someone gets sick [on the road]. They can't quarantine on the bus. That's probably the very worst place to quarantine. So if anybody does get sick, we would be leaving them in a city and [they] would be staying in a hotel for the 10 days and then fly out to wherever. It would be a nightmare. But luckily we avoided all that."

CRADLE OF FILTH's 13th studio album, "Existence Is Futile", was released on October 22. The LP was pieced together in isolation at Grindstone Studios in Suffolk with studio guru Scott Atkins (DEVILMENT, BENEDICTION, VADER). Horror icon Doug "Pinhead" Bradley makes a welcome return to the CRADLE fold, lending his dulcet tones to the band's most politically astute song to date, the epic "Suffer Our Dominion" as well as the album bonus track "Sisters Of The Mist", which is the conclusion to the "Her Ghost In The Fog" trilogy that started over 20 years ago on the infamous and classic "Midian".

Six months ago, CRADLE OF FILTH announced the addition of keyboardist Anabelle Iratni to the band's ranks.

Iratni, who previously played alongside Filth in DEVILMENT, as well as her own group VEILE, made her live debut with CRADLE OF FILTH on May 12 during the band's livestreamed concert.

Anabelle joined CRADLE OF FILTH as the replacement for Lindsay Schoolcraft, who announced her departure from the group in February 2020 after a seven-year run.

CRADLE OF FILTH 2021 is:

Dani Filth - Vocals
Richard Shaw - Guitar
Ashok - Guitar
Daniel Firth - Bass
Martin "Marthus" Skaroupka - Drums
Anabelle - Keyboards & backing vocals