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The big review: Damnation Festival 2024
What happened when Nails, Gatecreeper, Cradle Of Filth and a ton more brought the noise to Manchester for the biggest Damnation Festival yet.
Cradle Of Filth frontman Dani Filth weighs in on the state of modern horror.
If any metal singer knows a thing or two about horror, it’s Cradle Of Filth frontman Dani Filth. Over his storied career, Dani has used his band to explore topics from Lovecraftian cosmic monster to real-like serial killers like Elizabeth Bathory and the Gilles De Rais, all with Cradle’s ever-present undercurrent of gothic vampirism.
But horror fans are often really traditional, and given how much modern horror is about subverting tropes and challenging viewers -- as seen in the popularity of movies like Get Out and The Cabin In The Woods -- one wonders if Dani sees the progression of horror today as moving away from what makes the genre great. As it turns out, he’s 100% behind it.
“I think horror is getting cooler, and more thought-out,” says Dani when speaking to Kerrang! about Cradle's recent U.S. tour. “More off the wall, which I think is the case with music as well. Everything’s been so cross-pollinated, to the point where everything is sounding the same, and that which isn’t is just being regurgitated, with people doing reissues or redoing old movies -- which isn’t always a bad thing. The recent Halloween was great, for example.”
What Dani finds especially interesting is how horror’s new directions have made it a genre unto itself once more, rather than a collection of “psychological thrillers” and goofball cult classics. “The good ones I’ve seen recently have all seemed to be very different. I like The Ritual, I liked Get Out, the premise of A Quite Place was cool...I like the way it’s getting back to being a genre as such. There was a time when it all sort of dissipated and no one was investing in it, and now it’s a bit more a genre.”
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