“My village was the first one in England to install CCTV, just to spot us skateboarding”: Cradle Of Filth’s Dani Filth spent his teens being a skate punk hoodlum

Cradle Of Filth in 2024 — (Image credit: Press)

Cradle Of Filth singer Dani Filth has spoken about his punk and skateboarding background in a new interview with Metal Hammer.

Before he co-founded one of the most controversial black metal bands in Britain, Filth spent his teens skating around his village in Suffolk, listening to hardcore and thrash metal music. He reveals that his antics on his skateboard annoyed the local council so much that they installed CCTV and even put gravel on a busy high street in attempts to discourage him.

“Around 15, 16, 17, I listened to American hardcore, thrash metal and everything,” the frontman remembers. “It was our gaggle of skateboarders that got that law made: ‘Skateboarding is not a crime,’ or whatever.”

He continues: “Ours was the first village, apparently, in England that installed CCTV, just to spot us skateboarding! And they went to such lengths that they actually put all this shit on the road. It was like gravel, but it was in the tarmac. It was weird.”

All the efforts succeeding in doing, however, was irritating everyone else. “People were pissed off because they had to drive their cars over it!” Filth laughs. “It was just so we didn’t skateboard down the high street, which we did all the time.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Filth reflects on one of his earliest bands, saying that they used to rehearse in his mum’s living room.

“You must have heard it all the way down our road,” he remembers. “Her answer was, ‘Well, we just got double-glazing.’ It was during that 80s boom of everybody getting double glazing.”

The rehearsals were abruptly banned after one careless drummer left a massive stain on the floor. “It was all fine and dandy until she got a new carpet. And then our drummer forgot to put his mat down. He’d just oiled his new drum pedal. I tried covering it up – lasted a couple of days by pushing the sofa over it at a slightly obtuse angle – but I was discovered. Never happened again.”

Cradle Of Filth will release their new album, The Screaming Of The Valkyries, on March 21. However, the band’s long-hyped collaboration with pop sensation Ed Sheeran won’t appear on the tracklisting.

“We don’t want it to overshadow the record,” Filth explained to Metal Hammer in January. “But we are going to bring it out. Originally, everybody wanted us to bring it out to glorious fanfare but Ed’s management weren’t keen on that.

“We’re not absolutely sure how it will emerge, but it’s been done, mixed and it’s sitting on the shelf somewhere… you know, virtually. And it’s fucking fantastic. But only a handful of people have actually heard it. My mum hasn’t even heard it.”

Louder’s resident Gojira obsessive was still at uni when he joined the team in 2017. Since then, Matt’s become a regular in Metal Hammer and Prog, at his happiest when interviewing the most forward-thinking artists heavy music can muster. He’s got bylines in The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, NME and many others, too. When he’s not writing, you’ll probably find him skydiving, scuba diving or coasteering.