This time we focus on the upcoming European tour of Cradle Of Filth. When will that happen?
It is happening in a couple of weeks. The starting date is in Bristol on the 27^th of October. That carries out through the UK. I don’t have the dates at hand, so I cannot tell you the list, but I guess you will have them. After the UK and Ireland we head to mainland Europe and that goes right through until the 8^th of December I believe.

In between the show dates, there are quite a lot of days free in between, isn’t it?
Indeed, sometimes there is one day off, otherwise we shouldn’t be doing this. Four days in a row is maximum. There are plenty days off.

The tour is called ‘By Order Of The Dragon’ tour. Why that title?
It is the name of a piece of artwork, done by my girlfriend. It refers to the band’s situ, which is the order of the dragon. That has been our symbol since 1996, then we debuted it on the ‘Vampyre’ album. It is a reference to the order of the dragon which is a sacred order that people belong to, our situ has an inverted sacred cross, trampled beneath the dragon’s feet. On this tour there is no particular reference to any album, because our new album will not be out until April next year. We use this reference due to the fact that it includes the whole back catalogue. We will be playing a brand new song, which will be debuted on October the 22^nd, in two weeks time basically. So we put in that. We will play a few new tracks, we will play old tracks, fan favourites, a mix of audience friendly set list. That is why ‘By Order Of The Dragon’ is a suitable title and it sums up the whole approach of this tour.

I think that may be an interesting mix, because you can choose from many songs and records… Wasn’t it difficult to make a choice?
Yes, it is always difficult. I mean, we play for an hour and a half this tour. There’s four bands on the line-up. There is Butcher Babies, ourselves obviously, Mental Cruelty and Black Satellite. The bands are very eclectic and very energetic. It is more a celebration of music than just be black metal and black metal and so on. It is going to be cinematic as well. We just finished this next album and that will be released in April. It’ll be our fourteenth album. That doesn’t include EP’s or tracks of live albums or special collaborations or bonus tracks. With every album the task is getting more and more difficult to make a set list, although our drummer Martin can play for nine hours. Then we can play anything. (probably he hints at the prosperous recovery of Martin after surgery in March – Vera)

I have noticed that you have done an Australian tour recently, a small one…
Yes, it was a small tour. It was pretty much the same length as most tours, it is just we scrapped it into eight days. It was a day getting there, a day back, a day off, which was really only about half a day, because in the afternoon we had to fly. So it was very short-legged and very brisk, early lobby calls included. Flying from Brisbane to Adelaide, day off. Melbourne, Sydney, Bristol. Most of the shows were sold out. We were on tour with Infected Rain, I love those guys.

I thought that the new band High Parasite was also on the bill…
That is correct. However High Parasite cannot play the European dates. Only UK and Ireland.

What are your personal expectations from them, because these are well-known friends?
Yes we requested the band to do the UK dates, they couldn’t do the European dates unfortunately. They just gave me a copy of the record. I really like it. It is a very eclectic mix of Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride, Type O’Negative, Deathstars even. It is a really eclectic mix, I really like it. It is very different. We are used to Aaron Stainthorpe in My Dying Bride singing. It was produced by Greg Mackintosh from Paradise Lost. I have heard that they engaged Lector, our old keyboard player, for the tour.

Butcher Babies is really brutal…
Indeed, it is a mixture of black metal and deathcore. A really good album they released recently. It is a line-up over-spanning different genres, but they are very close together in that respect. We also don’t like to go out with bands that are exactly the same as us. It is always an experiment and hopefully these bands will gather some new friends and fans.