IT’S A BEAUTIFULLY sunny day in the summer of 2000, and Cradle Of Filth are tripping balls in a field in East Sussex. The band have temporarily relocated from their native Suffolk to the town of Battle, and are currently standing in the exact spot where, 934 years prior, William The Conqueror and King Harold II waged The Battle Of Hastings. As they bake in the sweltering heat, they see long-dead soldiers trooping past them.
“We had taken some magic mushrooms,” Cradle Of Filth singer Dani Filth recalls today. “We saw ghosts and all manner of things.”
Dani reflects on these psilocybininduced apparitions with the air of someone talking about visiting their nan for tea. That’s because it wasn’t out of the ordinary. For Cradle Of Filth, that summer was routinely insane.
Holed up in Parkgate Studios in Battle, Cradle were animals. They were young and their stock in the metal scene was rocketing. They partied hard. They drank. In
