Interview with Creeper
We had the pleasure of interviewing CREEPER over Zoom video!
At the end of CREEPER\u2019s sold-out headline show at the Roundhouse, vocalist William Von Ghould stepped out to thank the audience when a mysterious figure lept from the shadows and decapitated him in front of 3300 people. The lights went down and the big screen cut to a haunted house, where the band\u2019s reluctant social media host, the vampire familiar Darcia, deadpanned, \u201cIt\u2019s time for a new era\u2026 and I couldn\u2019t be more excited.\u201d
Every era in CREEPER\u2019s strange tale closes in similarly flamboyant fashion: see also their apparent Bowie-style on-stage break-up at the end of the campaign for their debut album \u2018Eternity, In Your Arms\u2019, which left some fans in floods of tears. But in CREEPER\u2019s ever eerie world, death is just a stepping stone towards a joyous rebirth. And now one of the most unlikely success stories in British music rises from the ashes once more with their new album \u2018SANGUIVORE\u2019.
Taking a darker turn from their Top 5 record \u2018Sex, Death & The Infinite Void\u2019, \u2018SANGUIVORE\u2019 is a thrillingly theatrical new story that the band\u2019s ever-growing army of devotees will devour themselves within. Riffing upon fearsome throwback vampire flicks such \u2018Near Dark\u2019, \u2018The Lost Boys\u2019 and \u2018Interview With The Vampire\u2019, its narrative focuses upon Mercy, a deceptively innocent yet savagely violent vampire, 19-years-old in conventional terms yet with a soul dating back some thousand years, and her relationship with Spook, an older man who falls under her control but doesn\u2019t quite lose sight of their previous humanity.
The \u2018SANGUIVORE\u2019 concept and characters have lurked in the crevices of the band\u2019s mind for some time. When it was time to turn those ideas into a full album, two elements were key to unlocking its potential. CREEPER\u2019s co-founder and guitarist Ian Miles had suffered from severe mental health issues as work got underway on \u2018Sex, Death\u2026\u2019 which naturally limited his input. But this time he was not only there from the very beginning, but a lack of a full-time second guitarist effectively doubled his workload. And he really stepped up, his creativity simmering throughout the record, from melodic classic rock solos to crunching metallic riffs, the latter of which forced Von Ghould to shape his vocal melodies in a very different style from before.
CREEPER\u2019s ambitious narratives are rooted in a similarly authentic place. Or as Von Ghould summarises, \u201cunderneath all the showmanship and the bravado of it all, there's something quite true there.\u201d \u2018More Than Death\u2019, for example, is the denouement of Mercy and Spook\u2019s tale, but comes from the frontman\u2019s own relationship. Friendship is also a recurring motif on the album, the beating heart behind the band, and especially the connection between Von Ghould and Miles. \u201cIt\u2019s a very special relationship we\u2019ve had. We've been touring since we were teenagers and now, we're almost old men and we're still doing it. If you told us when we first met that we were going to have any sort of success, I wouldn\u2019t have believed you.\u201d
That\u2019s the unwritten philosophy of CREEPER. Embrace everything you want to do, no matter how outlandish, excessive or ambitious, and see where the journey takes you. And it\u2019s a journey some twenty years in the making as the grandiose scale and ripping rock opera of \u2018SANGUIVORE\u2019 transports Von Ghould back to his childhood bedroom, listening to \u2018Bat Out of Hell\u2019 on repeat.
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