Creeper Unveil New Single ‘Headstones,’ Announce New LP
Creeper are back and ready to kick off their next chapter. The band have released their new single “Headstones” from the upcoming album Sanguivore II: Mistress of Death, due out later this year.
As the Harry Steel-directed video shows, Creeper are still firmly in their vampire phase and building on the mythology that was set with 2023’s Sanguivore.
“Headstones is the first glimpse into Sanguivore II: Mistress of Death,” says frontman William Von Ghould. “Set in a blood-drenched vision of the 1980s, it follows a vampire rock band on a tour soaked in violence and excess. It features some of our heaviest and most theatrical guitar work yet, echoing Iron Maiden, with Lawrie Pattison and Ian Miles trading solos in the bridge. It’s also the fastest single we’ve released in years.
“Lyrically, it sets the stage for what’s to come in the album’s narrative, exploring the dark perils of rock ’n’ roll, sins of the flesh, and pure evil. This is the band at its most over-the-top and unashamedly dramatic. But as our hero Jim Steinman once said, ‘Sometimes going all the way is just the start.”
In an interview with Kerrang, Von Ghould explains the idea behind he video, saying:
“The idea for the video was to show the characters, and say, ‘This is what it looks like when the band plays.’ So we did this huge thing with pyro and all sorts of stuff. It’s a really, really big budget rock’n’roll video. That’s what the song’s about as well: it’s the band talking about being in a band. It’s kind of the anthem for the record. It starts off on that high point, and it tells you who this these characters are. It gave us a really fun opportunity to have a movie monster chase us around and be a vampire rock band offstage. It’s a really good introduction to the record and how outrageously over the top all of it is.”
He also gave some insight into the album’s backstory and introduced the new baddie on the block: Mistress of Death, who is out to get the band.
“I can’t give too much away, because it’s an ongoing thing. I gotta keep kayfabe. But the idea was that we would take Sanguivore to a different part of the universe…The person playing her is this incredible woman called Sarah, who I met at a wrestling convention in Manchester – she was a Chyna impersonator. I had this vision in my mind of what the Mistress Of Death should look like, and I walked in and saw her and just went, ‘Holy shit! That’s her! That’s the Mistress Of Death!’ She’s training for a bodybuilding exhibition out in Italy, and she’s shredded at the moment. And in that weird way that everyone involved in Creeper has some kind of connection to this world, she was a scare actor for a bit as well, in a horror maze.”
Watch the video below.
The new album once again finds Tom Dalgety handling production. No release date has been set yet for the album, but the band teased on Instagram that it will arrive “this Halloween season.”
Creeper have several festivals booked for the summer, including Bloodstock, Rock am Park / Rock im Ring, and Graspop Metal Meeting. This fall, they’ll support Ice Nine Kills on their UK/European tour. See all their dates here.
