The First Album I Ever Bought: Dani Filth

Dani Filth of Cradle of Filth attends the Metal Hammer Golden God Awards at Indigo2 at The O2 Arena on June 15, 2015 in London
(Image credit: Jo Hale\/Redferns via Getty)

The first album I ever bought was Ultravox’s best of, The Collection. I actually re-bought it in Germany about 10 years ago because it had some different tracks on it. It was the first album I ever bought and literally two or three months after buying it, I got into metal! I loved Ultravox because it was pop, but it was dark. It was really dark.

My dad was a reggae collector but he collected records in general; he bought me a record player and gave me loads of singles in special cases and stuff, so I learnt to look after records! I think I got Dancing with Tears in My Eyes in that box and just progressed from there. Ultravox were quite a big band back then.

Hymn’s the second-best song on the album, it’s got that really dark bit in the middle. Everybody bangs on about Vienna because it’s the one that everyone remembers, but it’s got a really great darkwave middle section where it all goes into strings and there’s lots of bits like that throughout the whole album. The best song on the album is The Voice, though. I wanted to cover that with Cradle Of Filth and we were close to doing it at one point, then we all realised the error of my ways.

I might go back and listen to this album but only when I’m washing the car, and that’s just because I chuck my iPod on shuffle. Once in a blue moon, an Ultravox track will pop up and you realise that actually, yeah, it’s really cool. Obviously I’ve got my headphones on – I’m not blasting it out for everybody to hear because it’s quite embarrassing.

Devilment are on tour from December 6. Their album, II - The Mephisto Waltzes is out now through Nuclear Blast.

Dani was speaking to Alec Chillingworth.

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Alec Chillingworth
Writer

Alec is a longtime contributor with first-class BA Honours in English with Creative Writing, and has worked for Metal Hammer since 2014. Over the years, he's written for Noisey, Stereoboard, uDiscoverMusic, and the good ship Hammer, interviewing major bands like Slipknot, Rammstein, and Tenacious D (plus some black metal bands your cool uncle might know). He's read Ulysses thrice, and it got worse each time.