Something needed to change about how The Creepshow was working. While the band has never let their fans down (quite the opposite – they've overcome every adversity placed before them gracefully, in fact), something had to change because – to be perfectly blunt – everything already had; when the band first appeared five years ago, they asserted themselves triumphantly as a premier-grade horrorbilly act. They came out of the gate strong with their debut album, Sell Your Soul, flanked by a mob of more ghouls and zombies than listeners could shake a boomstick at and, while it was a bit campy, the band managed to make that camp rock like an infernal beast. The group's sound knocked all the skeptics and naysayers for a loop and, while their image was dark (in a “The Zombies Take Las Vegas” sort of way), The Creepshow's future looked pretty bright. Just as the head of steam the band was building threatened to burst the boilers though, outstanding circumstances forced singer Jen “Hellcat” Blackwood to call it quits indefinitely – thereby calling that bright future into question – but fortune smiled as Hellcat's sister, Sarah “Sin” Blackwood, stepped up and took the reigns.
The surreptitious sister/singer swap steered The Creepshow away from the brink, but the band wasn't out of the woods quite yet. The group's sophomore effort, Run For Your Life, was a strong enough showing, but something felt a little off about it; songs like “Demon Lover” and the title track were good, but it felt like the band was trying to maintain a “same as it ever was” façade even when it was plain to see the difference.
Was it nervous tension that kept The Creepshow clinging to the undead trappings of their sound, even when rigor mortis was beginning to set in? Maybe, but on They All Fall Down, the band almost spontaneously seems to show new signs of life as they elect to leave the zombies in the box this time but give listeners eleven new reasons to revel in eternal damnation.
After organist Kristian “Reverend McGuinty” Rowles delivers his obligatory sermon to open the record, bassist Sean “Sickboy” McNab, drummer Matt “Pomade” Gee and Blackwood launch headlong into “Get What's Coming” and don't pull a single punch; Gee's drums snap meanly at the heels of McNab's bass and and the pair aggravate each other until they've built up a rabid froth. It's an imposing, exciting front for sure, but it is dwarfed by Sin's presence. When the singer enters the fray, she arrives as an altered beast from the singer who appeared on Run For Your Life; where before she produced a sweet and almost poppy foil for her darker rhythm section, everyone has reached an even keel here – the singer presents an attitude of Joan Jett proportions while the boys speed up to keep from being blown away by her presence. And they do keep up. And the whole thing surges with a power that's fluid, infectious and incredibly potent.
The band doesn't stop for breath after their stage is set through songs including “Someday,” the title track, “Sleep Tight” and “Dusk 'Til Dawn” but what becomes increasingly evident as the band powers through is that the ghouls aren't the only things that the band left at home; while there are still some borrowed trinkets retained from the band's first two albums (once in a while, a few cliches from the 1950s like the teen heartthrob vocals in “Sleep Tight” and the wild surf guitar in the title track) the dominant vibe set across these eleven songs is definitely more 'punk' than 'greaser,' and the pure punk of tracks like “Hellbound” and “Road To Nowhere” remove all doubt of where the band will likely be headed in the future – and that future gets brighter again with each passing minute of They All Fall Down.
Artist:
www.thecreepshow.org/
www.myspace.com/thecreepshow
Album:
They All Fall Down will be released on October 5, 2010 by Stomp Records in Canada and Hellcat Records in the U.S. Pre-order it here on Amazon .
