For a scary bloke, Death in Vegas's Richard Fearless is disconcertingly amiable. Not quite the muttering, fetish-leather thonged, H.P. Lovecraft-reciting Dr Frank'n'furter you might expect, having shuddered along to Death in Vegas's last album The Contino Sessions. (Imagine Fatboy Slim, Vincent Price and Mervyn Peake cutting a big beat album. In a converted slaughterhouse. With the lights out.)
All matey asides and blunted, middle-England vowels, Fearless sounds more like a professional footballer in post-match interview mode, or a Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? contestant, than club culture's answer to Clive Barker. What is it the neighbours always say when that shy chap next door turns out to be a serial killer? He didn't seem the type. So quiet. So nice.
The comparison is doubtless familiar to Fearless - you just know he's watched Silence of the Lambs about a zillion times. A zero-irony, oddly sentimental affection for Gothic horror cliche permeates the Death in Vegas canon. From the wintry majesty of Dot Allison's (formerly of One Dove) fey vocal turn on Dirge, to Iggy Pop's outrageously vampish posturings on Ted Bundy tribute Aisha (surely the first glam-rock murder ballad to break the top 40), their visceral soundscapes drip aural gore. Death in Vegas - essentially Fearless and long term collaborator Tim Holmes, augmented by a clutch of session musicians and vocal collaborators - are scarcely self-pitying gloom peddlers; no humourless Leonard Cohen-isms or mawkish dolour here. It's just that you wouldn't fancy sharing a cab with them after dark.
"We've been accused of being a doomy band and although I can see where people who say that may be coming from, I wouldn't necessarily agree," says Fearless. "Our sound isn't all that bleak. It can be extremely dense and claustrophobic but some of our stuff is quite upbeat. My favourite records tread a very fine line between euphoria and despair. I think we've largely succeeded in walking that line."
Fearless attributes his scattershot pallet of talents - he runs a graphic design company in his spare time - to an unorthodox childhood. The son of a British diplomat, he was born in and spent his formative years in Africa and comes across as a good deal more chilled out and matter-of-fact than many left-of-field dance luminaries. The Contino Sessions (the second Death in Vegas album; a 1997 debut, Dead Elvis, lost out amid a clutter of mid-1990s big beat records) was conceived while erecting stone walls on his dad's holiday cottage in Donegal.
"I go up there with a load of books and try to take it easy. It's great, really relaxed. Things are very busy at the moment, and it's important to me that I have that time to myself."
Hammer Horror affectations aside, The Contino Sessions was chiefly notable for its cast of A-list celebrity vocalists. Aisha, arguably Death in Vegas's signature tune and the one whose flurried guitar intro is likely to precipitate an outbreak of gung-ho pogoing in the stalls when they play Dublin next week, casts Iggy Pop as a redneck killer soliloquising an imminent victim-to-be, sounding not entirely unlike a grumpy Leonard Nimoy in the process. Elsewhere, Primal Scream frontman Bobby Gillespie pops up to smear a trademark sneering falsetto over Soul Auctioneer, and ex-Jesus and Mary Chain-er Jim Reid gibbers along to a caterwaul of feedback and frayed loops during Broken Little Sister.
"We wrote each song with a particular vocalist in mind but we didn't go to them until the music was completely finished," says Fearless. And what if Iggy had indicated that he'd rather stay home and varnish his scars?
"Um. Don't know what we would have done. We just hoped they would say yes and didn't think any further ahead than that. Thankfully no one turned us down." Given his penchant for self-mutilation and general mayhem on the road (Stooges aficionados swear their idol once defecated mid-show), it's lamentable that we're unlikely ever to see Iggy Pop perform alongside Fearless et al. Death in Vegas tour alone - no guest singers. While on record, their music alternates between bruisingly intense outbursts and softly menacing interludes; in concert they overwhelm with a tumult of bleeding guitars and dirty squalls of distorted synthesiser. Nine musicians cranking out a furious racket. Expect lots of noise.
But the bedlam on stage pales against the pandemonium off. Fearless required hospitalisation last year after he was glassed by disgruntled punters in Sheffield. And a Belfast gig almost ended in tragic farce when two joyriders attempted to make off with the band's tour bus - with Fearless dozing in the back. How rock 'n' roll is that?
"We don't bring any singers on tour so we can be a little more fluid in what we do. We place a heavy emphasis on visuals. A company in London called Lazyeye collaborates with us on the short films that are projected behind stage. We don't exactly work the music around the film but they are an important element in our live performance."
Fearless appreciates that Death in Vegas's pantomime goth image will start to pall before very long. He plans a drastic change of direction on the next record; the departure is presaged on Neptune City (the final track on The Contino Sessions) a jolly muddle of sitars and tabula starkly out of step with the rest of the album.
"I'm off to India after this tour to chill out a bit. We'll be recording the new album out there next year. Some of the vocalists are already lined up. We want to maybe lighten things up a little. There's no point in being dark forever you know."
Death in Vegas play Temple Bar Music Centre on Friday, February 11th