Mark Morton at Examiner.com recently caught up with CRADLE OF FILT frontman Dani Filth to discuss the band's new album, Midnight In The Labyrinth, and a variety of other subjects. An excerpt is available below:

Mark: One aspect about the Midnight In The Labyrinth album I found amazing was how you managed to reconcile the really fast tempo stuff, like ‘Summer Dying Fast,’ with opposite-minded orchestral movements. How are you able to reinvent something like that after having performed it for so many years in one way?

Dani: "It’s really just the way it is translated from beats to orchestration; it’s basically tempo-mapping with a lot of ligado and swing. I guess it’s really a matter of finding the right instrumentation to represent the stuff. I think the best example of that is the intro to ‘The Rape And Ruin Of Angels,’ which was a really, really fast blast-beat on the original Vempire recording. And for some reason, it just sounds faster played with an orchestra. It’s pretty bizarre."

Mark: There is a large pool of people out there that believes that Cradle Of Filth is an abomination to the black metal name. How does that make you feel?

Dani: "It actually makes me feel warm and cozy. It makes me want to sit down in front of a traditional English log fire with a kitten on my lap...and stroke it and be nice to it."

Mark: Do you have any theories as to why there is this vehement population of hatred towards the band on the internet?

Dani: "Well, the internet is usually the home for people who are just a little bit sad and haven’t really got a proper life. So, you can imagine it being a cesspool of hate and evil. But I guess that’s what 'true' black metal is all about – hatred and evil. Some guy was recently really getting on my nerves because I didn’t sign something for him ages ago. He was drunk and being pushy, and I had already signed four things for him, and he moaned, 'You’re such a rock star! You’re really nasty!' And I said, 'Of course I’m nasty, I’m a black metal singer!' You really just get nobheads and idiots everywhere. But to be completely honest, no self-serving black metal person would be sitting alone at home on the computer – they would be out in the Nordic wasteland eating polar bears!"

Go to this location for the complete interview. Click here for an essay by Dani outlining ten of his favorite movie soundtracks and how they influenced Midnight In The Labyrinth.

Cradle Of Filth released Midnight In The Labyrinth on April 21st as a strictly limited edition two-disc set of delectable magic, with disc one containing narrated nightmares courtesy of Dani Filth, plus additional vocals from Sarah Jezebel Deva, whilst disc two contains purely orchestral and symphonic recordings.

Fans can use the widget below to acquire a free download of 'A Gothic Romance (Red Roses For The Devil's Whore)', taken from Midnight In The Labyrinth.

Taking the most requested tracks from the first four official releases, Cradle Of Filth have fulfilled audience desire by creating an album based on their most popular older tracks, but one that is delivered orchestrally to create a rich, haunting sonic landscape in the vein of soundtrack composers such as JERRY GOLDSMITH, DANNY ELFMAN and HANS ZIMMER.

Ten songs make up this 78 minute meisterwerk (including the addition of a thirteen minute exclusive aural séance on CD1), indulging such COF classics as ‘Funeral In Carpathia’, ‘The Twisted Nails Of Faith’ and ‘Summer Dying Fast’, which has already been showcased on last year’s Evermore Darkly EP to a more than rapturous audience response.