The Night Creeper

The Dark Night Rises:

The turned-on, tuned-in dropouts strike again

dB Rating: 8/10

Release Date: September 4th, 2015
Label: Rise Above Records

Uncle Acid is coming to take you away. But where is the question. To Cambridge, England, where Ol’ Uncle A himself—known to his mum as Kevin Starrs—resides in a semi-employed hypnotic state, churning out seductive tales of abject violence, wanton druglust and satanic sex rituals? Where ’60s biker flicks and Hammer boobs ‘n’ blood turkeys spin on an endless loop in some permanently damaged corner of your fragile psyche? Maybe an alternate universe where Tony Iommi runs out of blow and starts snorting Bill Ward’s beery, crushed-up molars? Where John Lennon lugged a .44 Magnum around Manhattan, preemptively blasting not only Mark Chapman, but suspicious-looking teenagers on the subway, Bernie Goetz-style?

Well, dude… we just don’t know. What we do know is this: With The Night Creeper, Uncle Acid has officially cranked out four albums’ worth of blurry Sabbathian night terrors full of chopper wars and murder mania, of helter-skelter girls and sudden Kool-Aid death. Doom-ridden accounts of topless women in bell bottoms being dragged by the hair into drug dens by toothless beardos while coppers in custodian helmets nightstick the proverbial fuck out of hippies in shit-stained corduroys. Switchblade sisters and swastika psychos. Shotguns and speedballs. Vampires and vixens. Burnouts and blood cults. That’s what it’s supposed to sound like, right? Maybe you just need another dropper full of Orange Sunshine to attune your struggling senses. Wait, hold still for a second. We can squeeze this stuff directly into your bloodshot eyeballs.

Now that we’ve got all the prerequisite imagery squared away, let’s get down to brass tacks: Is the album any good? The short answer is YES. Okay, but what does it sound like? It sounds like Uncle Acid, of course. And his Deadbeats. Which is just shorthand for Sabbath via Electric Wizard, innit? Uncle A might like us to mention the Beatles in there as well, but we feel like we’ve got that covered with Sabbath. Ozzy, after all, is a diehard Beatlemaniac—and anyone who can’t hear the Fab Four’s indelible influence on the Drab Four must be smoking something. And by that we mean angel dust or bath salts or something weird you ordered off the Internet that we haven’t even heard of. Because weed should definitely work.

Before you get too high, you should know that The Night Creeper is a concept record about a homeless piss-bum who goes on a killing spree or something. He might even have a time machine. (We’re not sure.) Musically, it’s not quite as diverse as 2013’s Mind Control and it’s not as immediately infectious as 2011’s Blood Lust. But it’s still pretty fucking awesome. And the imagery— check out that album cover—is their best by far.

— j. bennett
Review originally printed in the October 2015 issue (#132).