Photo Credit: Maryleen Guevara (28th March 2024 – Camp and Furnance, Liverpool)
If we were asked to name one band from the UK which we are convinced have everything in their arsenal to not only land a significant shot, but could blow a hole in the rock music industry around the world, decimate the charts and become a global, unstoppable force of melodic and ear worm producing nature – we wouldn’t hesitate to name Creeper. The Southampton sextet are almost a glorious laboratory hybrid of some of the greatest things in music. Take a fifth of David Bowie and fling it in a blender with equal parts Marilyn Manson, AFI, Misfits and now a massive scoop of the soaring vocal range and glorious theatrical pomp of Meatloaf and you have an idea of the musical mastery this gang of pals exhibit.
Tonight we’re in Edinburgh at the intimate and absolutely packed, clearly sold out, La Belle Angele for their pre-Easter gift to us Scottish rock n’ roll revellers and by the end of the evening Creeper have unwrapped a classic night which will live long in our memory banks and they have set the bar high for covering live shows for the rest of the year. Having seen Creeper excel in a sweaty tent at Download last summer it is a surprise to absolutely nobody that the band have been hoisted up and catapulted into a main stage slot at that same, glorious festival this coming June.
Creeper are far from an overnight sensation though and their current vampire-themed fourth studio album Sanguivore. Here the gang: Will Gould, Ian Miles, Sean Scott, Hannah Greenwood, Jake Fogarty and new boy in the brood Lawrie Pattison are in fine voice, musical mastery and the quintet have their A game on full display for the eager Edinburgh crowd who hang on every word, and every note from the stage. Marching onto the stage fully clad in black leather, sporting undead face paint and looking every inch the soundtrack to a reimagining of The Lost Boys. But they don’t just look the part and our favourite horror punks are here to make a sonic impression on Edinburgh’s musical heart.
The set begins with Cry To Heaven which has black gloved fists in the air punching a hole in the sky from the first rip roaring sing-a-long. Poison Pens and Lovers Led Astray keep Creeper’s boot on the throat of the crowd with no let up from the high energy set. Guitarist Ian Miles’ fingers dancing up the fretboard at breakneck speed as the band crank out banger after banger. Hiding With Boys is next before Cyanide emerges as one of the only tracks from the band’s Sex, Death and the Infinite Void album – which perfectly illustrates the depth of their back catalogue now. Napalm Girls is next before a huge roar greets The Ballad of Spook and Mercy. The autobiographical tale of Mercy who appears as quite a young innocent female but she is anything but. Instead she is actually centuries old, aggressive with her kills and Spook is an older man, physically looking, but younger in comparison. The track, very much Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds inspired, is a massive crowd favourite, as is Teenage Sacrifice – cue another sing-a-long.
Onto Ghost Over Calvary before Will takes a well earned breather and Hannah Greenwood has her time to shine, taking centre stage for the always poignant and always crowd pleasing Crickets. ‘She’s in your jeans, but I don’t care…you were my dream, now my nightmare,’ she sings flawlessly alongside Miles’ expert shredding. Greenwood has spoken before about her love for the song as it allows her to connect with the audience on an emotional level where she is able to see all of the faces in the crowd and hear everybody singing along, and Edinburgh duly obliged.
Down Below and Chapel Gates are next before a deep cut in Honeymoon Suite from The Callous Heart EP. We’ve been to literally hundreds of shows in the past but Creeper seem to generate more sing-a-longs and audience interaction than almost any other band. Annabelle is another case in point with the crowd bellowing ‘Aaah ahhh ahhh …. God can’t save us; almost loud enough to bring a smile to the vampirish face of Gould on stage. The emotional, feels-inducing I Choose To Live slows the pace in all the right ways before the band take a bow and flee off stage like bats into the night.
Of course the traditional demand for an encore followed with the thundering of hands clapping together and a choral unison of ‘one more tune’. Creeper duly returned for two final songs. Further Than Forever is first as they channel their theatrical bombasticness one last time. The set ends with the band’s most athematic song and the soul stirring Misery. ‘If you could see the wreck I am these days….you’d have new reasons to stay away…’ sings frontman William van Gould just once before pointing his microphone into the crowd and we do the rest. One of the loudest and unified sing-a-longs in all our gig going years as Will and the band grinning at one another on stage and marvelling at the Scottish rockers in the crowd who are all part of the Creeper cult – for life.
And of course as the band say themselves … ‘Misery never goes out of style.’ On this display it never, ever will. 9.5/10
Written By: Eric Mackinnon
