Cradle of Filth: The T-Shirt That Offended Everyone

Cradle of Filth: The T-Shirt That Offended Everyone

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I cite my sources and they may differ than other people's accounts, so I don't guarantee the actual accuracy of my videos.

British Heavy metal band Cradle of Filth has attracted it’s fair share of controversy throughout their career. Today we’re going to take a look at the worldwide controversy that erupted over a shirt they released that rolling stone magazine dubbed and i quote “the most controversial shirt in rock history. “

Now because this is youtube i’m not going to show the shirt and chances are if you’re watching this video you’re either already familiar with the shirt or you can use google to look up exactly what i am talking about.

The infamous t-shirt began as a joke. The band’s frontman Dani Filth would recall to Rolling Stone “it was 1993 and we were about to go on tour with norwegian black metal band emperor. We had a different t-shirt at the time it had a picture of my wife who was all done up in black metal regalia and it said the black goddess rises” on it. We needed t oget a new shirt done quickly for the tour. We’d already come up with the vestal mtubation image and phrase but we stil needed a back print for it.”

It was during a discussion amongst the band members about what to put on the back of the shirt that somebody uttered the infamous phrase. ”Jesus is a expletive.” While the band was pushing the boundaries with their t-shirts, they had to find a t-shirt shop that was willing to print the shirt. Every t-shirt shop in band’s hometown of hadleigh (had-la) in suffolk refused to print the shirt, They found one printing shop in another town who agreed to do it on the down low and even gave the screens to the band as they wanted no evidence that the shirts were printed there.

It was estimated that within it’s first six years of release 25,000 shirts had been sold. With so many of those shirts floating around it was only a matter of time before somebody wore the shirt, angered someone and the media covered it and that’s exactly what happened across the UK. So can you be charged with wearing a shirt as offensive as cradle of filth’s? Well kerrang in 1999 would actually interview a law firm about the shirt and they would sate

“You can be charged under obscenity legislation if a t-shirt is capable of being grossly offensive to a certain minority or even special interest group. You can also be charged with wearing something that’s considered to cause harassment, alarm and distress or encourage an altercation.That’s exactly what happened in the UK in the mid 90’s and early 2000’s.

Starting in 1996 a fan of the band named Roy Kenyon who was 29 at the time was arrested by police in London after wearing the shirt in London. Kenyon would be charged with and i quote profane representation under the 1839 act and fined 150 pounds. The following year it would be a member of Cradle of Filth who got into trouble for wearing the shirt. The band was waiting at a ferry terminal in Dover England to take the band to the Netherlands to play at a music festival. Their drummer Nicholas Barker was wearing the shirt while waiting at the terminal. The police charged him with resisting arrest and creating a public disorder. The band would still be able to make their gig as Barker only spend two hours with the police.

The shirt’s transgressions weren’t just limited to Europe as the same year in America a 24 year old record store employee named Andrew Love was arrested for wearing the shirt at a mall in Ocala, Florida. He would be arrested for violating the states obscenity law but the charges would be dropped. Of course religious groups criticized the move with the Caotholic League of America referring to the dropped charges as being and i quote “victory for sickos” and called out the band claiming their songs had numerous references to devil worship.

In 2001 the shirt became a political issue in Scotland as the local provost in glasgow pushed to have the local tower records stop selling the shirts. The store would be raided twice by the police. Tower Records initially fought back but the media coverage would result in the store selling out of the shirts
During the band’s appearance at ozzfest in 2002 and 2003, Sharon Osbourne banned the sale of the shirt. The members of Cradle of Filth would admit that the decision was likely made not because of political correctness or Sharon’s

In 2007 the

Source

https://www.rollingstone.com/f....eature/cradle-filth-