Despite only having a five-track EP and a handful of shows to their name, Southampton’s Creeper are already turning a lot of heads.
Previously, frontman Will Gould and guitarist Ian Miles’ plugged away for years on the UK’s toilet circuit with their former outfit Our Time Down Here. The band called it a day last year, leaving Will to decamp 5,423 miles away to Los Angeles in order to explore other projects.
“I started writing songs for a musical based on an extra-terrestrial romance,” recalls Will. “I still have all the songs and in fact, some of those ideas have been converted into Creeper songs. We’ve used a few things – but not the lyrics. It really was ridiculous.”
After shelving the somewhat ambitious alien love story, Will and Ian reunited, and recruited guitarist Sina Nemati, bassist Sean Scott and drummer Dan Bratton to form Creeper. Before booking any shows, the quintet recorded and released an EP which couples their old school punk roots with influences from the darker recesses of the genre, such as My Chemical Romance, Alkaline Trio and Will’s personal heroes AFI. “They’re the band that changed everything for me,” explains Will. “When I was a kid, AFI came through and they had this whole aesthetic that tied everything together. I remember listening to Black Sails In The Sunset for the first time and I couldn’t believe that four guys had made this record that takes you to another world. It’s an escapist piece of punk rock.” AFI’s sense of escapism has rubbed off on Will’s musical vision. There’s more to Creeper than catchy punk rock songs, too. From the off, the band’s songs are imbued with a sense of the theatrical and draw influence from literature, cinema and the stage. “We can’t just bash out a bunch of songs,” says Will. “Other bands might do it differently, but we always spend time putting a lot of research into our songs. When we’re writing, I always rearrange the walls in my bedroom and make a collage to get a real visual sense of what we’re doing.” It might be early days for Creeper, but they’re already carefully planning every facet of what they do, be it meticulously designing a gig poster or staging a photo shoot in a pumpkin patch. Given the fact that the band are so obsessive over everything they’re doing, it’s no surprise that listeners themselves are becoming similarly obsessed at a growing rate. “We’re a band that’s sometimes hard and fast, but there’s also a bombastic flamboyance to what we do,” reckons Will. “We’re always treading a fine line. It’s music to piss off your dad and his lad mates!” Creeper’s debut EP is available from December 8. You can find out more details at the band’s official Facebook page. The band have also been announced as support on Funeral For A Friend’s UK tour next month. See Funeral For A Friend’s website for more ticket details.
