Two years have passed and just like clockwork another Cradle of Filth album has been shat out of hell into our apprehensive laps. Fuck! I just got these pants dry-cleaned from Thornography.

Thankfully breaking the cycle of less-than-clever album title puns, Godspeed on the Devil’s Thunder is Dani Filth and the gang’s attempt at making yet another concept album about a medieval noble serial killer a decade after the release of their Elizabeth Bathory story, Cruelty and the Beast. With the subtitle The Life and Crimes of Gilles de Rais (guess I spoke to soon about the punning), the band crudely attempts to provide the biography for a nobleman turned sexual deviant turned Satanist turned blah blah blah. While de Rais sounds like he was a real piece of work, this album is pretty scary, too: Godspeed is a frighteningly long album that sounds disturbingly outdated with a shocking absence of dynamics in the concept.

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Over the past decade and a half, few bands have attracted as much controversy, inside and out of the metal community, as Cradle of Filth. With the release of each album, the popularity of these British black metallers just grows and grows, and their increased success is always followed by a cloud of angry school marms and tr00 kvltists who think COF have betrayed the cause.

The band’s forthcoming new album, Godspeed on the Devil’s Thunder (Oct. 28, Roadrunner) isn’t likely to change any of that. A symphonic concept album about Gilles de Rais, the peer of Joan of Arc who went on to do unimaginably terrible things to literally hundreds of children, is easily the fastest, heaviest album the band has released in years, and seems destined to stir the pot once again.

We recently got the chance to sit down with COF vocalist, namesake and general mastermind Dani Filth to chat about a wide range of topics. Jet lagged though he was, we found Dani to be a smart, funny, articulate, and a very passionate guy. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Cradle of Filth aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, and their work demands your attention. Read Dani’s thoughts on the new album, the controversy surrounding the band, and his forthcoming book, The Gospel of Filth, after the jump.

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Cradle of Filth have posted a new song, “Tragic Kingdom,” for free download here. The track comes off the band’s new Andy Sneap-produced album, Godspeed on the Devil’s Thunder, which Roadrunner will release on October 28, just in time for Halloween (ooooooooh… spooky). It’s a concept album about Gilles De Rais, a peer of Joan of Arc’s who later did a lot of horrible stuff to a lot of little boys (and some little girls, but, like everyone here at the MetalSucks Mansion, he preferred little boys). We got to chat with Dani Filth about the album last week, and he told us it was “a dark fairytale.” I’m not sure how a French nobleman going all Hostel on a bunch of kids can be a fairytale, but, hey, I’m willing to give Dani the benefit of the doubt.

ANYWAY, the song seems a little more traditionally black metal than anything from the last couple of COF albums, although at this point I don’t know if there’s anything Dani and the boys could do to satisfy the tr00 kvltists. I’m also fairly certain they don’t care.

-AR

[Thanks to Ryan Durinick for the tip].