Rosary beads. Check. Holy water. Check. Stout Hessian undergarments. Check.

You may think that I’m being over-zealous with my preparations, but you should never underestimate the forces of darkness. Especially when they’re sat not three feet away from you on the other side of a pub table.

Lovers of all things black that they are, Cradle Of Filth are limbering up for their sell-out Temple Bar Music Centre show with a pint or five of Guinness. Hailing from that most rock ‘n’ roll of locales, Suffolk, they’ve spent the past 11 years amassing a cult following, and with a million units shifted are probably the biggest underground metal band in the world. Along the way they’ve managed to upset everyone from the Governor of Wisconsin to the Strathclyde Police Force who were none too happy about Tower Records selling their ‘Jesus Is A Cunt’ t-shirts.

“People think we’re just trying to shock, but those t-shirts are our way of saying ‘fuck off’ to the Jesus Saves brigade, and the right-wing fundamentalist crap they spout,” explains mainman Dani Filth. “Bog standard Christians I can handle, but those born again wankers do my head in.”

Needless to say, such blasphemy didn’t go unnoticed by the tabloids, who felt compelled to warn their readers about ‘The Most Evil Band In Britain’. For the first time since Ozzy indulged in a spot of dove decapitation, heavy metal was front-page news.

“One minute you’re being totally ignored by the mainstream media, and the next some bloke from the BBC’s asking you if you want to do Never Mind The Buzzcocks.”

Which Dani did, thank you very much.

“My initial reaction was, ‘Fuck it, no, they’re only going to take the piss’, but then I remembered back to when I was a kid and the buzz I got from seeing Maiden and Motörhead on Top Of The Pops. I’m not saying that me sitting there answering a few questions is the same thing, but if it encourages people to check out your music, it’s worth doing.”

Cradle Of Filth’s media whoredom doesn’t end there.

“We did another BBC show called Sleeping With The Enemy, which involved the horrified mother and sister of one of our fans coming on the road with us,” Dani reminisces. “They let it be known that if we didn’t do it they were going to get Insane Clown Posse instead, so we had to say ‘yes’.

“Anyway, this very nice lady and her daughter came to two shows in Holland, and then travelled over with us to Ireland where we were wrapping up a six-week European tour. I’m not entirely sure that we converted them to the Cradle Of Filth cause, but we went on the piss together in Temple Bar and had a brilliant time.”

I also remember hearing something about CoF and a certain celebrity TV gardener.

“That was classic,” he enthuses. “Mark & Lard had Alan Titschmarsh on their Radio One show, and somehow they ended up talking about us and Satanism in modern music. I just remember thinking, ‘This is fucking surreal!’”

Fascinating stuff, but not quite the depraved catalogue of bestiality, necrophilia and virgin deflowering that one expects to vomit forth from Dani Filth’s mouth.

“I see us as being from the same tradition as Nietzsche and H.P. Lovecraft – y’know, dark but very literary. There’s no point agonising over the music if all you’re going to do is stick “Oooo baby, suck my love pump” lyrics on top. A song’s only as good as the words and the imagery it contains.”

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Cradle Of Filth oeuvre, let me quote from one of the tracks on their Midian album, ‘Lord Abortion’: “I slit guts and free the moistest faeces/Corrupt the corpse and seize the choicest pieces/Her alabaster limbs that dim the lit carnal grin/Vaginal skin to later taste and masturbate in.”

Westlife, it most certainly ain’t.

“We shared a lift with them once in Chelsea but, tragically, didn’t have any blunt instruments on us at the time,” Dani rues. “Getting back to our lyrics – you’d have to be a complete fucking idiot to take a song like ‘Lord Abortion’ literally.”

So he has as much in common with Clive Barker as he does Alesteir Crowley?

“Yeah.”

Further journalistic probing reveals that, far from being a devil-worshipping psychopath, Dani Filth is a perfectly decent middle-class chappie who used to go to public school.

“Guilty as charged,” he laughs. “It was pretty posh, although not one of the really traditional ones where you get rogered in the showers by the older boys.”

Is there anything else he’d like to confess to?

“My mum makes most of our stage costumes; I read Winnie The Pooh to my daughter; and I always moisturise after taking off my make-up.”

His hair-care regime?

“It varies but I normally use a separate shampoo and conditioner.”

Not all bands are as well adjusted as Cradle Of Filth, as they discovered for themselves in 1993 when they toured with Norwegian death metallers Emperor.

“Their drummer – who seemed a nice enough bloke – got pissed one night and told us he’d killed somebody. We thought he was winding us up, but no, a few months later he was arrested and sentenced to life in prison. They ended up attributing four or five murders, and dozens of church burnings to this satanic death metal ring which is still around today.”

The guy Dani’s referring to, Bard Eithun, stabbed to death a 42-year-old homosexual who propositioned him in an Oslo park. Asked about it recently, he said: “There’s no remorse. I took his life and I paid for it. It’s not a big deal.”

The Burzum lead singer, Varg Vikernes, was equally sanguine after murdering his Mayhem rival, Euronymous: “He died from one stab to the head… through his skull. I actually had to knock the knife out.”

The violence wasn’t only external, with Euronymous’ bandmate Death divulging that, “Something I study is how people react when my blood is streaming everywhere,” and then blowing his brains out.

“That whole thing was fuelled as much by adolescence as it was Satanism,” is the Filth verdict. “You had all these 17 and 18-year-olds living totally for their music, which in one way I admire. If they’d taken that fervour and used it positively, then who knows what they might’ve achieved?”

It’s indicative of the changing heavy metal hierarchy that Cradle Of Filth are about to headline Holland’s massive Dynamo Festival over Motorhead.

“It’s no more than that fucker Lemmy deserves. Every time I’ve met him – which is a few – he’s been a cantankerous old sod. You’d have thought living in LA he’d be happy, but no, he just sits there snarling at everyone.”

The Satanic work ethic being what it is, Dani has found time to make his big screen debut in Alex Chandon’s latest schlock masterpiece, Cradle Of Fear.

“It’s basically 90 minutes of full-on sex and gore, which we’re having to sell over the internet in the UK ‘cause it’s too extreme for the cinema,” he enthuses. “I play a character called ‘The Man’, who carries out revenge murders on behalf of another psycho, Kemper, who’s been sent to prison for eating children.”

The gorehounds among you can find out more at www.cradleoffear.com

While none too enamoured of nu-metal – “Limp Bizkit fans deserve to have their ears hacked off” – Dani is glad that loud guitars are back in fashion.

“Yeah, and that we’ve ditched that ‘80s image of metallers being greasy haired, acne ridden and girlfriendless. We’ve done gigs recently where there’ve been more women in the crowd than blokes, which is a complete reversal of the way things used to be.”

Good news if you’re partial to groupies.

“There are some fucking stunners out there, but with me being married and a daddy, it’s a case of ‘look but don’t touch’.”

What sort of music is Baby Filth into?

“We haven’t let her out of the cupboard for a while, so I dunno. She sort of twitches along to our records, which is all you can expect from a two-year-old.”

With showtime rapidly approaching, it’s back to the Music Centre where there are indeed lots of lovely ladies to offset the Clearasil brigade. The ‘Jesus Is A Cunt’ line may have been discontinued – spoilsports! – but the merchandise stand is still doing a roaring trade in ‘Fingered By God’ and ‘Cemetery Slut’ t-shirts. There’s an even bigger scrum in front of the stage where crash barriers have been erected to protect the band from over-zealous moshers. A wise precaution given the mayhem which greets the first of Cradle Of Filth’s operatic speed metal epics. Acquired taste or not, you have to admire Dani’s ability to go from guttural growl to choirboy falsetto in the same breath.

“We come from hell to bring you foot and mouth,” he intones in his best Hammer Horror voice. A downright porky, but far scarier than the, “We come from a small village outside Ipswich…” version that would’ve beaten the lie detector.

Having spent the past year being bored senseless by the alt country/new acoustic movements, it’s great to see a band who are willing to sweat for a living.

“That’s what it’s all about,” Dani reflects afterwards. “Blood, sweat and having the best fucking time of your life.”

Cradle Of Filth’s Bitter Suites To Succubi album is out next month on AbraCadaver