Creeper as they were couldn't continue on, they couldn't just make more records that sounded the same and accomplished the same task. They needed to grow, learn, develop into more fully realized people. The result of that process is "Sex, Death, & The Infinite Void", an album that is still Creeper, but is a more evolved take on their brooding emo/punk sound. If "Eternity, In Your Arms" was a soundtrack for coming of age, this album catalogs the complicated feelings once you have gotten there.
The initial single to the record, "Born Cold", quickly established this was a new chapter in Creeper's story, and the subsequent releases showed us the band was spreading their wings in every direction. The eyeliner might remain, but instead of emo tears, they are there for old-school glam. Creeper has brightened their sound, pulling from sounds and eras that have echoed through time because they could survive in both sun and moonlight. Creeper is stepping out of the shadows, and daring us to look.
"Anabelle" is a perfect embodiment of this new attitude, as it's a song that could not have exited in Creeper's previous incarnation. The synths and jangling guitars set up an almost joyous tone, which becomes reverential when the song's chorus turns into a revival-tent hymn singing "God can't save us." You can imagine Will Gould dressed as a faith-healing preacher, only instead of being a fraud taking advantage of the desperate and meek, he is being an honest messenger and telling them there's nothing that can be done. The God that created this mess isn't going to be the one to clean it up. Like Nietzsche's famous declaration that "God is dead, and we have killed him", Creeper is delving into the darkest of possibilities. It's a startlingly deep and mature take on what could have been done with all the nuance of a chainsaw.
In a way, this record serves as a soundtrack to a film noir no one has yet put on celluloid. We can hear the beats of the story and how it builds in "Be My End", how it falls away on the emotional climax of "All My Friends", and the cathartic B-story of "Cyanide". That particular thought was driven home in my mind during the spoken word section in "Anabelle", where the vocal cadence and the drum beat sounds quite similar to a part in Brian Setzer's imaginary film soundtrack album "Songs From Lonely Avenue" (I am by no means accusing the band of anything - I don't think hardly anyone has ever heard that album other than me).
On "Paradise", the guitars take on the tremolo of vintage surf music, but this time sounding deeper, and more like the soundtrack that would come as you are gripped by the undertow, your brain shutting down as you run out of breath. The paradise is the image you create to fill the black void, and the sinister guitar notes are there to keep you from forgetting it's all in your imagination. When the horns kick in near the end, Creeper is taking on the guise of The E Street Band, if they were transformed by the moonlight.
"Thorns Of Love" is a bizarre mashup of almost Motown soul with the epic madness of Jim Steinman. The song goes from the soft stabs of guitar and a shuffling rhythm to a chorus rivaling anything Meat Loaf sang, which is made all the more obvious when the spoken word section is pure Steinman, and the following guitar solo, complete with bells, is right out of "Bat Out Of Hell". This stuff plays right into the cracks of my heart, and I ate it up.
Creeper takes us on a trip through many chapters in olden music history, and what's amazing is how they do it so well. We saw Lordi try this same sort of thing, with a far more obvious gimmick behind it, and the results were disastrous. Creeper, however, are able to convince me they are Peter Pan, they have been around through all these episodes and eras, and that's why they can inhabit the various sounds and make them feel natural. It's quite the accomplishment to reinvent yourself not just once, but several times across the same album. I haven't heard it often, and maybe never as well as Creeper has done it here.
The story of Creeper is the one I most enjoy writing. A band I heard promise from on "The Stranger" blossomed into a great band on "Eternity, In Your Arms", and now they have shattered expectations and emerged as grayscale butterflies shimmering the moonlight off their iridescent wings on "Sex, Death, & The Infinite Void". Those wings are fully stretched, and they span as wide as I can see. Creeper has make a remarkable record here, whether or not it winds up being the best of the year, it very well might be the most impressive.
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