Album Review: CREEPER - Eternity, In Your Arms

01. Black Rain

02. Poison Pens

03. Suzanne

04. Hiding With Boys

05. Misery

06. Down Below

07. Room 309

08. Crickets

09. Darling

10. Winona Forever

11. I Choose To Live

I had the pleasure of seeing Creeper last summer at the 2000 Trees festival in Cheltenham, and I really enjoyed their set. I've been keeping tabs on them and watching their music videos since and finally, after what seems like a lifetime of waiting, their debut album is finally out. Thanks to their videos and lengthy campaign for this album, I've been familiar with a number of these songs for some time. It's pretty obvious that a hell of a lot of money has been pumped into Creeper, so expect to continue to see them at plenty of festivals, and plastered all over the Rock magazines. Their debut album was also really cheap at £7.99 when most new CDs are £9.99 or more, which tells me that the label are very keen for this album to make an impact on the charts early on. Maybe I'm just cynical?

More importantly, is it any good? Actually, yes. Creeper fill the void left by the now defunct My Chemical Romance and the various other bands who have called it a day, who were all once hugely popular with Emo kids across the globe. Creeper's album is packed with quotable lyrics that would have served as MSN names back in the day, and are all marketable on the backs of T-Shirts such as "Misery never goes out of style".

Musically, they seem to be influenced by older artists such as The Misfits, The Smiths and The Cure, as well more modern bands such as My Chemical Romance and AFI giving them huge crossover appeal, as I could easily see the NME crowd getting into them as much as the Heavy Rock/Goth scene.

The album kicks off with the huge single Black Rain which is a very strong opener and sets the tone for the album perfectly. Poison Pens shows the faster and more aggressive side of their repertoire before soaring into a melodic chorus juxtaposed with some Hardcore shouting. Other highlights are Misery, which I'd describe as a mournful Gothic power ballad, and the relentlessly catchy Pop Punk Winona Forever. The album is consistently good, and wraps up nicely with the piano driven powet ballad I Choose To Live, which bizarrely sounds a bit like Meat Loaf both musically and in terms of the over the top dramatic delivery. I'm sure many teenage girls will have this album as the soundtrack to their complicated lives and love it immensely. Personally, I thought it was really good, and it made me want to re-watch the episode of South Park where the Goth kids talk about their disdain for the emos and the douchey vampire kids, and burn down Hot Topic.