Horror Punk band Creeper have a big year ahead of them. Last year, the Southampton six-piece already won Best British Newcomer at the Kerrang! Awards and Best New Band at the Metal Hammer Golden Gods Awards, but now they’re planning to widen their fan-base with their debut album Eternity, In Your Arms coming out on March 24th.
Frontman Will Gould, keyboard player Hannah Greenwood and guitarist Ian Miles found some time in between the album release madness to come to BIMM and talk to our first year Music Journalism students about their upcoming album, playing Download and dealing with sexism in the music industry.
At the moment a lot of bands are focussing on EPs and singles whereas you’re about to release your debut album this month. Do you think there is still a future for the album?
Will: All I’ve ever wanted to do is to make albums. There is something about being able to take someone from one place to another throughout the course of an album, taking them to another world for the proportion of time that you listen to it. I think the world is changing and people want tangible music again which is really exciting, I think there’s always going to be value in a long track.
Ian: I had a friend and we used to do this thing where we’d get together and have listening parties. We would set up his record player and put a record on, put two chairs in front of it and just sit and listen to the record. It was really nice.
Is there anything that you’ve enjoyed in making the album that you didn’t have with previous EPs?
Ian: When we were writing we were very focused on dynamics. We like to play with dynamics a lot rather than just keeping one train of noise, and when you’ve got such a long amount of time, you’ve got a lot of freedom of what you can and can’t do, so it works really well.
Will: To have something that is deeper and has more depth to it is really important, and you can do that more on a LP. You’ve got room to breathe, to try different things and experiment. We have a country song on our record, we would have never got away with that on an EP because you’ve only got 5 songs to do.
You’re set to play Download this year. Do you prepare differently for a festival set compared to a show on tour?
Ian: You have to, there’s so many people at a festival and the majority are not going to know you, so you take that into consideration and put together almost a starter pack. It’s an introduction to the people who haven’t heard you before, so it’s important to try and condense everything that you think summarises your band into one set. It’s about getting the round package.
Will: You’ve only got one shot with a lot of those people, 30 minutes to sum up your band, so you pick your very best songs and go with those.
Hannah, you’ve mentioned having to deal with sexism at gigs before, do you think it is improving at all in the music industry?
Hannah: I don’t think it’s at the level where it needs to be. A lot of the time I am the only girl in a touring party and I’ve had security come up to me and be like, “it’s band only now, you’re going to have to leave” and I’m like “I am the band.”
Will: It was such a sad experience. She had her lanyard around her neck, security had seen her coming in and out throughout the day and then saw her gender and was like “oh I’ll just ignore this lanyard and the fact I’ve seen her around today.”
Hannah: It’s a lot better than it was, but it’s still really difficult. Hopefully one day it’ll get to the point where men and women within the music industry will be seen as the same. Fingers crossed.
We’ve talked about your love for albums and the fact that you recently made one. Is that album the way people are supposed to get to know and consume Creeper?
Will: I think this is a pivotal point for the band. How many people get into a band and think, “oh, I’ll start with their EPs.” You don’t, you start with album one and learn from there. A lot of the people who are going to come and see us play next year for example, will probably know us from this album. The EPs show progression towards the album, but if someone were to ask me what the best way is to experience Creeper, I’d say listen to the album because that is where we are at now.
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