The fact that Sanguivore II isn’t quite as good as the first waxes and wanes on the surprise-o-meter. It flies in the face of the conditioned response for a new Creeper album, where they’ve been incredible enough from the very beginning to one-up themselves with each subsequent release. But at the same time, it’s uncharted ground of not undergoing a complete sonic upheaval from album to album. Even a strict sequel isn’t new for them, when you could argue that American Noir was that to Sex, Death & The Infinite Void, while still being different enough to stand on its own.
This, however, is as inextricably linked to the original Sanguivore as it comes, spelled out in its title and smoothened by a direct continuation of its musical palette. And that’s not a bad thing at all. Sanguivore was a great album, the next evolutionary stage in Creeper’s gothic tendencies that had spanned Eternity, In Your Arms’ Alkaline Trio-worshipping punk and Sex, Death & The Infinite Void’s haunted Americana. On Sanguivore, Creeper became the raunchier, more uncompromising version of themselves, leather-clad and playing to hard rock excess that their chameleonic stature took to so easily. But with Mistress Of Death, you begin to realise why the animus of reinvention has been such a constant for Creeper. With the gothic stylisation of it all sticking to the forefront, they’ll tend to—if you’ll pardon the pun—bleed close to everything that can from whatever it’s paired to on a release. And with Sanguivore the first time, which already had ‘rule of cool’ as its primary directive, is there much more that a second round can offer?
What you’ll recognise most upon completing a listen of Mistress Of Death is how, in the constructive formula and pre-existing list of conventions of a Creeper album, there’s no deviation. It’s what they’ve been doing since Eternity, In Your Arms, essentially—songs about sexy vampire fantasies with a towering power-ballad to close, in which the singular Hannah Greenwood solo number is the clear highlight. Of course, such an assessment needs to allow for the fact that this is Creeper we’re talking about, routinely one of the best, more glaringly entertaining bands currently in existence. They do indeed have a formula, but also one hell of a high floor from which to start on. Ultimately, that’s what Mistress Of Death’s successes rely on—Creeper at their least impressive can still rip out a bevy of fun jams like no one’s business.
You almost get the impression that Creeper do understand that, and hence they lean further into the silliness and camp of their enterprise than ever before. Though seldom played with a straight face (especially on the last album), their blood-lapping tongues are pressed into their cheeks at new depths from the very start, where a returning Patricia Morrison in her opening monologue utters the line “Rock music is a horny vampire”. If that doesn’t set a tone…well, Creeper aren’t shy about putting in the legwork themselves. Why else would there be such a conspicuously-timed delivery of Headstones’ titular line as “So give us head…stones”? Or why would William Von Ghould’s ad-libs on Parasite be a semantically-appropriate-yet-still-suggestive “Suck, suck, suck”? Honestly, it’s a wonder there isn’t a ‘Count’ prefixing Will’s stage name at this point, as his vampiric caricature is the concentrated source of his…well, vamping. Just look at Blood Magick (It’s A Ritual), featuring his most stentorian, Draculicious low-end yet, complete with an evil belly-laugh, on a song whose melody is so explicitly modeled around Heaven Is A Place On Earth.
It’s almost worth pondering whether Creeper realised that Halloween is on a Friday this year and specifically crafted their most outward graveyard smash around that fact, to best capitalise on cultural / brand synergy. If so, fair play—they’ve done a really good job. The go-for-broke, full-throttle style of Sanguivore lends itself well to something like that, whether in big, glossy singalongs replete with choral embellishments like Prey For The Night or Daydreaming In The Dark, or a surging arena-rock cut like The Crimson Bride that cranks up its melodrama to the max and then keeps going. It’s the built-in, pre-loved appeal of Creeper, particularly in this era, in full swing. Massively overt familiarity seems like such a non-issue when this band are still killing it in the business of unfettered entertainment.
Thus, Mistress Of Death reads like less of a throwaway or wheel-spinning exercise, and more like a low-stakes, high-octane, particularly enjoyable bit of direct-to-DVD sequel-schlock. If it’s not concerned with growth, it’ll pump its stock of adrenaline into what’s already here, where every solo and acolyte-belted backing rush represents the original Sanguivore’s rule-of-cool mantra turbo-boosted. Pavor Nocturnus is the closer that only this Creeper album could have—soaked in drama with strings, pianos and choirs that make way for the spiralling, exalted finisher, as Creeper cook up their equivalent to Slash shredding outside the church on November Rain. And then there’s Razor Wire, in which Hannah Greenwood takes the lead for a detour of lounge-jazz by way of darkwave, revelling in its heated-up slinkiness with a killer saxophone line for good measure (of course). It’s hardly surprising that this is the album’s best song when Greenwood frequently heads those up, but as the only real juncture on Mistress Of Death that puts forth something brand new, there’s a bit more carried on its shoulders that’s appreciated.
On the whole, though, it’s a testament to Creeper’s abilities that they can take a familiarity with the potential to cripple and spin something exceptionally workable from it. It’s the closest we’ve got to a ‘filler album’ from them and that’s barely a blow that registers. When the worst thing about Mistress Of Death is that it’s a bit closer to the mortal plane that anything that preceded it, that doesn’t seem like something to fret over, right? Indeed, a loose, self-aware Creeper is awash with highlights in itself, regardless of arbitrary hierarchies. That said, after this, it’s probably best to put the Sanguivore style to bed. This is truly the end of what can be extracted from it; if there’s another go, it might actually start to feel stale. However, that’s a hypothetical that, at this point, isn’t worth considering, not when Creeper’s aptitude for avoiding poor decisions exceeds any judiciary body in existence. For now, amid a limited style and with limitless enthusiasm for it, Creeper remain nigh on impossible to beat.
For fans of: Billy Idol, Ghost, the first Sanguivore (obviously)
‘Sanguivore II: Mistress Of Death’ by Creeper is released on 31st October on Spinefarm Records.
Words by Luke Nuttall
