Will Ghould and Ian Miles are enjoying a well earned seat backstage at Download. Both their shoes are caked in thick, gluey mud. But the boys can’t stop grinning.
For the third year in a row Creeper have smashed an unmissable set right out of Donington Park, moving up the stages each year, with their main stage set fresh in the hearts, minds and ears of 70,000 festival revellers. Very few bands are invited back for a hat-trick of consecutive appearances so have Creeper become the Download house band?
“Honestly, we just love it here,” beams Ghould warmly as the frontman clutches a well earned, post-set beer. “I think it’s because it means so much to us, because we’ve been coming here since we were kids. So it’s surreal to be asked back so many times and that. So people show up for us every time, you know. I don’t know but it certainly feels like home to us here for sure.”
Guitarist Miles is grinning away and nodding as his pal talks, before he chimes in himself. “And we have such a like, we’re really good friends of Andy Copping [Download Festival booker], and we have such a good working relationship with him. And he was talking to us just as we got off the stage and he was like, you guys, you can come back whenever you want. He was like, we fit you in even if we haven’t got space. So like, that was really, really sweet.”
“Yeah, he’s a sweet man,” agrees Ghould excitedly. “And so yeah, it does feel like a home from home. I feel like I’m here. But like every time we come back, it never feels like, oh, is anyone going to show up or not show up. You know.”
“Oh, it’s absolutely still exciting to play at Download,” adds Miles. “Like today. Like walking up to the stage, I was like…..knowing what we had planned for the show today and knowing that other people didn’t know we had that, it was like, I don’t know, it was really exciting. And then when we got on stage and we looked out and all those people were there that it’s still so exciting.”
The conversation turns to the wild and wacky world of wrestling, where both Ghould and Miles are big fans of WWE, but if Creeper could pen a walk out entrance song for any wrestler in the world, who would they choose to write for?
“Oh, God, that’s a good question and one we have never been asked before,” says Ghould with a grin.
“It would have been Bray (Wyatt), wouldn’t it?” asks Miles. “Oh, yeah. When Bray passed away it was so sad. I was really upset. But. Yeah. So something or someone like that. It’s someone spooky, you know? Or maybe someone like Alistair or Malakai Black now, you know? Yeah. Like, I would love to do something for him, you know? But, like, truthfully, we’re waiting for the call, you know, like, any time we are good to go because I absolutely love professional wrestling.”
Creeper have already worked briefly with the world’s biggest wrestling company, when their track Poison Pens was used as the theme song for a PPV on the company’s NXT brand, giving the boys a wee in, into the world they love.
“It was in like 2000,” recalls Miles. “Roadrunner, the label that we used to be on had, like, quite close connections with WWE.”
Ghould is leaning forward now eager to jump in, as he recalls his own memories of working with WWE at the time. “I did a thing with them, years ago. I did, like an interview with Malakai and Ruby Riott and, yeah. So I did a whole thing.
“I made a super Titan Tron for me. And so, like, as a little wrestling nerd, like, it’s still, it’s still my passion, you know, I just, loved it. It was so cool. I was like a gorilla before. I was like, they gave me the NXT, mic. And I was like, I used to make these, like, out of a tennis ball and a stick. And I painted that with a Sharpie. And then I’d make a little box of him like, I was on Monday Night Raw all the time. Yeah. Huge fan.”
Being big wrestling fans and having had a song feature on wrestling television across the world, the final question on the subject is obvious but has both the boys scratching their heads in deep thought. What would be your walkout song if you were a wrestler yourself?
“That’s tricky isn’t it,” roars Miles loudly. “Because you can’t pick like the more sombre tracks with one. It’s got to be something that has got an outrageous riff. Yeah, it’s an outrageous riff. Oh, it really does.
“I’ll probably fall back on the classics and I’ll probably have, Metallica song, maybe, like Wherever I May Roam because you can have, like, the big bass and drop and like the lighting show and then when it goes out. Big fireworks. Yeah. And I’m in the ring already.”
“I don’t know but like Square Hammer by Ghost would be a really great one,” picks up Ghould. “That was so hard. And, so something like that, like, I think something that really putting some real balls to it. Also do you know the band Midnight? They have this song You Can’t Stop Steel. Like, I listen to that band all the time and that song makes me feel like I’m walking through walls every time I listen to it. So it’s kind of like that.”
Creeper are undoubtedly surfing a vampirish, black but massive wave on the back of their smash hit album Sanguivore. The album surpasses its predecessor in size, and it is even more grandiose and theatrical. It embraces Ghould’s admiration for composer and lyricist Jim Steinman, known for creating massive hits for Meat Loaf and Bonnie Tyler. These symphonic rock songs, while somewhat old-fashioned, maintain an enduring melodic appeal.
None of the songs on Sanguivore scream Meat Loaf and glorious pomp more than the epic More Than Death, but the song has been missing from live sets across the country – at least so far.
“Haha yes we have been holding it back for a little while, and it’s one of those ones that’s like such a hard song to sing,” explains Ghould happily. “It’s like properly at the top because the chorus is high. And then there’s the post-chorus part, you know, is like the top of my veins. So we’ve been kind of saving it for a special, special moment. We have the show at Wembley at the end of the year, so odds are we might hear it there.
“It sounds a little precious to us as well. And we don’t want of this, you know, kind of thrown it in, you know, so and so it’s always like, well, moments got to be right.”
Miles agrees the time hasn’t been right for the More Than Death epic to come to a live Creeper show, but they are clearly both excited at the prospect of debuting it when they can.
“The thing with that song is, is where it’s at, it’s the first time we’ve ever had quite an orchestra heavy,” Miles goes on. “We would be doing that song a disservice to just have all that stuff on a track and then just have a piano and go out in front. We would need to deliver it in the correct way when we, when we have the right opportunity.”
Keen to explore More Than Death, what it means to the band and the origins of this epic track, we ask Ghould if it’s a song based on his own life and experiences.
“Yeah, it’s something that I started writing when, I had COVID,” he answers. “When that was going on, I was at home, and I was like, trying to make myself useful because I couldn’t come to the studio with the guys. So I was just at home. And I did try my voice because I was sick. My voice like scratchy and it’s off.
“And my girlfriend was working downstairs and she was just like, shut the fuck up. So I was, it was, testing my vocal ability. But yeah, it says for most, most of the people stuff really has a real reality behind it. It’s kind of a song about my girlfriend. But, if it, it’s written on the gut, the guys of the album and the narrative of it, some of it, it’s, most of it kind of is out that way for me. It’s a lyric that is half it, half in reality and a half in fiction.”
Miles then reflects on the first time he heard the song and his band mates insecurities about playing it to the rest of the band.
“I remember when you first played that song to me and, Will, bless him, gets, like, big imposter syndrome, even though you probably wouldn’t ever admit that,” says Ian honestly as he turns to look at his best mate.
“But he’d be like, I’ve got this song. I don’t know, I really like it. I’m not sure if it’s quite right. I’ll play it to you. But I was sick, and I. My voice was little scratchy, and, and I was like, just play it, mate. And he played it to me. I was like, if that doesn’t close the record, I’m quitting this band. And then we then then we took it into Tom, and, he just as well orchestrated the shit out of it. I didn’t even really touch that song. I did a string arrangement and that was it. But yeah.”
“This is my favourite album closer we’ve ever had and we’ve had a few now,” says Ghould. “But it’s one of them, it’s quite precious to us I think. And we trying to find the right moment to do it live and do it justice.”
Tracks like More Than Death have made huge impacts on fans of Creeper, in much the same way Meat Loaf or Metallica tracks have impacted the lives of the boys in the band – a fact which the Ghould and Miles are massively grateful, if also surprised, for.
“I guess it’s like, it’s an amazing thing. I mean, every once in a while, we’ll see something really, really grand that it has affected people,” considers Ghould, who is fielding high fives and hellos from other bands walking past and congratulating them on their set.
“It’s like, it’s so incredible. And so it feels so impossible because I think it is the way that we were affected by music ourselves, you know? But you never, like, ever expect something you’ve made to be that special to us. It doesn’t only come into our consciousness. I think as soon as you start, like, writing, you know, like, there’s a lot of bands that we don’t really like very much that, like, clearly these days, writing to try and pull your heart strings in, and for us it kind of is a little bit more subversive and a little bit more, nuanced for us, where it’s kind of like, oh, we, we write these huge concept records each time, man. But you never know if people might hate them, you know? And so it’s difficult for us.”
“It’s really hard to, to sometimes think about your own role in that,” beams Miles. “That blows my mind like that. People want to think about the fact that that happens with people from something that we make. Yeah. I’m just like, it’s like it’s incredible. But I just feel so unbelievable.”
“Yeah. You can’t really equate it the same way” picks up Ghould. “Like, I think like the second you do, you start becoming like a dick, you know, as well. And like, for us, it’s always been like, Creeper is a very project to us. And I think, I like to think at least that it runs a little bit differently to other bands where like, it is, it’s something that we nurture and try to keep.
“There’s a great, Nick Cave quote when he, when he won an award and he was talking about how his muse could, like, thank, thank you for the nomination, but I’m not interested in it because my muse is a really precious thing. I think that, trying to keep the ideals that you make, it is a really, really important. And, and it’s incredible that people who feel that way. But if we believe for a second or any of those things, I think we just would ruin our career process.
“But, you know, just now in California, actually, I met somebody else who came up and I was talking about not that song, but like my band in general. And it was just so surreal to be in California, you know, where like, so many of our favourite shows were made and, I said, I want to talk to you about us, you know, like, this is so lovely and weird and, yeah, it’s it’s incredibly humbling and feels very special to us.”
Interview by: Eric Mackinnon
