There are parts of the 18th-century church where Creeper’s Will Gould lives that he dare not venture into. Even though this former place of worship has largely been converted into flats, remnants of its previous function are still in evidence, and they give him the willies. There’s the crypt, for starters.
“It’s terrifying,” says Will. “I refuse to go in there. I keep imagining that there’s something really sinister in there. Or someone.”
Then there’s the mysterious area at the back of the church, which has been blocked off by a dividing wall with a door that remains permanently locked. Or at least it did until the other day, when Will found it open.
“It was pitch black in there, except for this big, stainedglass window with light coming from it,” he says intently. “I swear it was the most haunted thing I’ve ever seen.”
There’s a double irony to this. Will was raised Catholic though he’s a confirmed non-believer these days, so the combination of God and the supernatural should have no effect on him. Even more ironic is the fact that his band, horror-punks Creeper, have made a concept album that centres around the undead. Specifically vampires.
That album, Sanguivore, is a gloriously grandiose, deliciously decadent goth rock opera inspired by The Sisters Of Mercy, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Glenn Danzig, Billy Idol, such iconic movies as Interview With The Vampire, Let The Right One In, Leon, The Lost Boys and cult VHS-era fang flick Near Dark, and – towering above it all – the late, great Jim Steinman, the mad genius behind Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell and half a dozen of rock’s most fevered phantasmagorias.
Restrained, it is not. Instead, – a word for someone who exists on blood in the same way as a carnivore exists on meat – has ambition drippingurges Will on opening track, Given the song itself is an outrageous, nine-minute Wagnerian death ride, he’s answered his own question.
