Sanguivore II: Mistress of Death is a thematic sequel to your 2023 album Sanguivore. How did the storyline for this album come about?

It was informed by the audience quite a lot, actually. We’ve kinda been known over here for destroying the whole thing and rebuilding the band in a new image each time at the end of an album cycle. We did it the first time years ago in 2018 when we did a David Bowie homage on stage where we broke the band up. We took a year out from being a band while we made a record and re-emerged a year to the day. People have become used to our schtick at this point, so it gets harder and harder to pull the wool over someone’s eyes and elude them. We thought the one thing that people wouldn’t expect us to do was make a sequel, so that was a bigger trick than destroying it all.

Also, it’s been the first time with a Creeper record where the audience have played such a big part in it. We weren’t originally doing the makeup live, but the kids kept coming to the shows in all the vampire makeup, so it was kinda informing itself to make a sequel. Then I woke up one day and we were touring as a vampire band in America, wearing makeup every day, and I was like, “Oh my god, there’s something to this here!” Especially with the aspirations we’d had working with Tom Dalgety and making these big, '80s-sounding songs, paying tribute to these classic rock records that we love so much. I was like, “Wouldn’t it be amazing as a starting place for a potential sequel to imagine what it would be like if there was a vampire band playing vampire rock music?” [laughs]

It’s cool how the fans had such an impact.

Yeah! It’s the first time that’s happened. It was funny because we went back to the KOKO to announce it, which is the venue where we ended one of our old concepts, The Callous Heart. We returned to the scene of the crime, almost. It was one of those things where they were expecting bad news because the last time we were there, there was lots of crying and shock, and this time it was a happy thing. The Sanguivore universe was expanding and carrying on, and it was partly because of them. It was a nice thing.

Was that the show where you got stabbed in the eye?

This was the one where I was stabbed in the eye, yeah! I’ve made a miraculous recovery. They’re both here! [laughs]

What a way to announce an album!

Yeah, we’re not very good at subtly in Creeper. [laughs] It’s a big, dramatic performance all the time. The idea was to launch the first chapter of the video trilogy, so people were discovering this as they go. Stabbed in the eye was a new one for me. I’ve been decapitated now, stabbed in the eye, I wonder what they’re going to do to me next sometimes. [laughs]

You’ve said this album is taking a lot of rock tropes and making them wilder and having a lot of fun with them. What were some of the tropes that were the most fun to play around with?

I was always a big fan of the music and the look of hair metal. I was one of those people who didn’t like it when grunge knocked out hair metal. I thought it was more fun and I thought it looked more appealing. I grew up with glam rock and stuff in my house, stuff like David Bowie and Roxy Music and T. Rex. All that sort of stuff was on the stereo all the time, so when I discovered hair metal and stuff as well, I was like, “Oh, this is a little bit like that.” The glam metal stuff was really cool. But there was also a lot of negative stuff that came along with that era of music. There was lots of misogyny and lots of things we really didn’t want to have a part of this, so we tried to flip those on their head and skew those ideas a little. It was fun to do a lavish, opulent version of what a rock band was back then, but in a different way. For example, Hannah [Greenwood, keyboardist and vocalist] came to us and she was like, “I’d love to do some sort of vampire orgy scene that’s all girls!” I was like, “Oh, that’s so much better than what would’ve been going on at that period of time!” Charlotte, my girlfriend, was involved with it and our friend Lauren as well. It was a big, fun thing.

There’s a vocal melody in “Blood Magick” that’s a reference to a load of different songs. It’s “You Give Love A Bad Name”, it’s “Heaven is A Place on Earth”, and it’s a lot of Desmond Child, Alice Cooper, and Bed of Nails. There were a load of songs in the ‘80s that had a very similar sound and we were trying to imbue all the stuff on the record with those sounds. Also, having a gospel-ish quality to the backing vocal was really important. I was thinking about the Rolling Stones and David Bowie on Aladdin Sane and stuff where they’d have a gospel-ish singer in the background of things. We had this amazing girl called Chantal [Lewis-Brown] come in and layer up lots of cool gospel vocals in the background. It was lots of playing with things and lots of really clear nods to a very particular era. It’s supposed to be a period piece, so we had lots of fun with that.

All the Satanic Panic stuff is woven in too. You have Anton LaVey and Jayne Mansfield references on “The Black House” and “Blood Magick” with the line, “California infernal.” What’s the story behind that?

Yeah! Well, it’s a really obvious one for us. I had such an interest in Anton LaVey and the Church of Satan since I was a kid. I think a lot of the music that was going around at the time referenced a lot of that. I think Matt Skiba was a part of Anton LaVey’s church at one point. [laughs] I think they were all card-carrying Satanists for a while, almost in a cartoony way. I always had an interest in Anton LaVey and when we were on tour in America, I got to go to a museum that had a bunch of the robes and stuff from the Black House. We got to visit where the Black House was once. It’s now just a regular house, which is less exciting. [laughs] But the mythology behind it is really cool and what some of that stood for, which was not really a great deal about Satan, but more about a mentality about believing in yourself. I’ve always really been interested in the countercultureness of it and also the glamour of Jayne Mansfield and Anton LaVey’s relationship is really interesting.

The Satanic Panic was very, very important because it was such an influence on 1980s rock music. This album was a period piece and we knew a lot about it already; there was a keen interest in it. What better way to expand the lore of a vampire rock band than using hidden messages in the music and all of the brilliant things that rock music was accused of in the ‘80s? It worked out perfectly. It was really a no-brainer for a storytelling device and getting to weave lots of stuff in. I went to Catholic school when I was younger, so lots of those things were very useful to help tell our story about this band trying to infect the country. [laughs]

You have some TV-sounding clips on “From the Depths Below". Are they taken from the time period or did you create those?

These were references to lots of evangelical television preachers and things. It was a lot of stuff that we dug up and we re-recorded everything. It was actually all voiced by Tom Dalgety, who was the producer of the record. He did some spoken word stuff on the first Sanguivore too, in the bridge of “Further Than Forever” he reads the poem that I wrote there. Each time round, he takes on a character and his influence is there. This time around, he’s almost doing like a Max Headroom sort of thing, where he’s speaking from the television, but he’s a preacher. It’s cool. He kind of pops up here and there. He’s also in the bridge of “The Black House”.

We just thought it was a cool way to tell the story. A lot of what we’re trying to do with these Sanguivore records is to transport you somewhere else. We kinda feel like part of the responsibility of the band is to try to really immerse the listener in a different world. By having different characters and different themes and trying to really hammer home the idea that someone is infecting the youth in America, the Satanic Panic was a really useful storytelling device for us. Having Tom do voices is always my favourite thing anyway, it was perfect.

Patricia Morrison is also on the album on “A Shadow Stirs” and “Pavor Nocturnus”. She was also on your album Sex, Death, and the Infinite Void. How did the collaboration with Patricia start? What’s it like working with her?

She’s a really good friend of mine! We met ages ago. We were at an awards show. You do these things when you’re at awards shows - it’s a load of bullshit really - but you come in at the front and there’s loads of fans outside and as soon as you get through the door you enter this queue. You sign all these things outside and then it’s just a queue of people waiting for this photo wall, such bullshit. [laughs] We’re all herded into this queue and all of us just want to get to the bar, but I see Dave Vanian walk in at the back of the room and I go, “Oh my goodness, I’ve listened to Damned millions of times since I was younger. I need to go introduce myself! I might never have this chance again.” He’s dressed up to the nines and he looks amazing. So me and Ian [Miles, guitarist] hung back to go meet Dave Vanian. I introduced myself like, “I am such a big fan,” and he was like, “Nice to meet you! Who do you play with?” We were like, “We play in Creeper,” and he said, “Oh, I think my daughter’s been to see you a bunch of times with my wife!” I knew exactly who his wife was and next to him was Patricia Morrison. Obviously, we were completely starstruck by the two of them because of the icons that they are.

We just struck up a bond with Patricia. She’d been to see Creeper a bunch and she has become very dear to us. She agreed to do some stuff on Sex, Death, and the Infinite Void and I took her in to read all this poetry stuff we had to help that narrative along. When we were making an ‘80s vampire rock record that was based in America, there was no one better. I was like, “Oh my god, my friend Patricia is an ‘80s vampire!” She was part of that whole scene in California. So I called her up and she invited me and Tom over to the house and we recorded her parts in her living room. Then Emily, Patricia, me, and Tom all went for a curry and it was really nice! [laughs] We had this really lovely, wholesome afternoon.

She’s lovely, she’s so encouraging, and she really understands what it’s like to be in a band, obviously, because she was in The Gun Club, The Bags, and has all this amazing history. She’s full of brilliant stories and really, really cool. She’s a very inspiring person in my life. It’s always an honour to have her speak, but especially on a record like this one that is so gloriously over-the-top. We were absolutely amazed and elated to have her be a part of it. It was really cool.

Her voice fits so well with everything!

She’s so cool! She’s effortless at it. You wouldn’t believe how quickly she does it, it’s crazy. She just channels it straightaway.

You’ve dedicated this album to Jim Steinman and incorporated one of his quotes, "sometimes going all the way is just the start", into “A Shadow Stirs”. What impact has he had on you?

An incredible one, especially with Creeper. His impact is kinda hard to measure, really. I was such a lonely kid when I was younger and I listened to lots of records. I remember the first time I discovered Bat Out of Hell at my dad’s house and the scope of that music and the ambition of it and the silliness of it, too. A lot of the time, Meat Loaf is seen as a guilty pleasure and it’s really not for my group of fiends. We’re big fans of Rocky Horror and all of the stuff that Meat Loaf has done. Jim Steinman ended up being involved in so much of the material that I loved, like Bonnie Tyler and Sisters of Mercy, which obviously links Patricia into this as well. [laughs] She worked with Jim out in New York. He had a hand in writing the majority of my favourite songs and my go-to karaoke songs as well. [laughs] He’s an incredible force in our lives, so we dedicated the first Sanguivore to him and the second one too. Any of the Sanguivore records really owe a huge debt to him.

Tom Dalgety, who’s also responsible for a lot of this, was a huge fan as well. He actually has the Pandora’s Box Original Sin gatefold at his house, which I was very impressed with the first time I went round. It was very cool! It’s the old girl band that Jim put together; just incredible voices and just an amazing record, really theatrical. I think there’s a theatrical quality to this music that really resonates with kids like me, a little bit dorky and over-the-top. It’s too much for “cool” kids and that’s good because you don’t have to deal with that. You just have your own little world where you put it on and that’s kinda what Creeper is as well, I think. It’s forged in the image of that and with the ideal of that. In Jim’s songs, the main character always got the girl and was a stud and Jim was not that at all and I thought that was really cool. He’s a really, really interesting guy to read about as well. I wish we’d met while he was alive; that’s the only sad thing.

He lives on through you.

I hope so! I hope he would be proud that there’s kids who are trying to honour his legacy. [laughs]

You mentioned Rocky Horror and you can definitely see that influence in your stage show and the videos. What does that musical mean to you?

That was another one of the most important formative moments of life, watching Rocky Horror when I was younger. I was staying at my dad’s girlfriend’s house at the time - this was back years ago, when I was a kid - and back then, everything was on VHS tapes. She had recorded Rocky Horror on VHS and written “Rocky Horror” on it. I was really into horror movies at the time and I thought it was just a horror film to watch when they’d all gone to bed, so I put it in the VCR and my life was never the same. A lot of weird, repressed feelings in me felt really accepted by watching it and I think a lot of people have a very similar feeling when they watch Rocky Horror. Even though it’s an insane piece of sci-fi and camp theatre, there’s something there, and people really find their place within Rocky Horror. I certainly was that sort of person. My mom would then take me to see the Rocky Horror show on stage. I’ve been to see it loads of times. I always dress up and I just find it a really special film.

The other thing I love about it is that it was written by Richard O’Brien and performed by Tim Curry and Patricia Quinn and all these people upstairs in a theatre in London. It wasn’t a giant thing. It wasn’t full of money at the beginning and even when the film came out, it was a cult classic. It was on at midnight in theatres and it took it a long time to find its audience. I think there’s something really punk rock about that. There’s something that reminds me of being a DIY punk when I was younger and about everything you build with your friends. That’s kinda what Creeper is now; it’s all my fiends working on something together. I think it’s a really lovely, special thing to be able to go somewhere and dress up and be yourself and not be judged and find a place where you’re happy, even if it’s just for a couple of hours. I think that’s a really powerful thing for a young person. For me, it was.

We’re doing ComicCon and there’s a horror convention here in Manchester that we’re going to. There are a lot of things like that, where you can disappear for a bit and you don’t have to worry about other people looking at you strange or thinking you’re odd. I think a lot of us who find punk rock and find theatrical music and rock music and heavy metal are those people at heart who felt a bit excluded from the rest of the world or a bit different. It’s always amazing when you find something that makes you feel like you fit in a little bit more.

Everything just clicks like, “This is what the world is actually, it’s not all this other bullshit. This is the stuff that matters.”

Yeah! If you don’t fit into the world that’s out there, you can build your own and make your own friends and your own reality. That’s a really hopeful thing. It’s a really lovely idea that you can build your own world and reinvent yourself. I think that’s a really, really powerful thing and a really powerful message to give to people. We’re trying to do that with Creeper, but that’s what Rocky Horror did for me.

You’ve mentioned that your video for “Prey For The Night” goes back to your punk, DIY roots in terms of creating it. It also has a lot of ‘80s references, obviously, like Halloween, Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, The Shining, Night of the Demons, and all the food packaging. How did the idea for the video come about? Where did you find all the packaging?

We had to build a lot of it. I have this Doritos packet here still at my house! We built this. It’s bigger than it should be, and it’s full of stuffing inside; it’s not a real bag. We printed it on paper that was coated in sticky-back plastic and superglued the seam. We had to find and rebuild this old ‘80s Doritos design here. It’s an American design, of course, as well. Everything is hand-built. Everything in that room we either had to source or build.

The idea came along because of the nature of the record and where it’s set. The budget was so slim on that video and I was like, “Well, what can we do? What’s in our control?” I know that, luckily, I’m surrounded by a really brilliant cast of very creative people. I live with a very creative person and I have a very creative partner, so we were like, “If we keep it small, we can build things. We know we’re builders. We know how to muck in and set things up. We can do it all ourselves.” We know that because we came up in a scene where it was very much like that. When we started Creeper, it was very, very much that, even more so than now perhaps. This is a throwback in a way like, “We can’t afford it, but we’ll build it!”

All of my friends were helping. We had people doing it for free. Creeper is like a collective in a way. It reminds me of a big group of people doing something together, like the Rocky Horror show, where everyone’s doing their own thing and it’s a small project, but the show must go on and we’re somehow doing it altogether. We have an incredible filmmaker who works with Creeper called Harry Steel and he’s been with us on the road for a long time now. He knows the band and it kinda feels like he’s in the band as well. He does all of our photography. So we already had him involved. We have a lot of really trustworthy, brilliant creatives. One thing that a big budget can’t buy you is the right creative lines and luckily, we are rich with that so we managed to pull it off in the end. [laughs]

It’s really, really quite funny. I keep saying to everyone at the moment that it reminds me of Ed Wood and the group of people that made his B-movies like Plan 9 From Outer Space and Night of the Ghouls and Bride of the Monster. You’ve got vampires and Bela Lugosi and all of these professional wrestlers and mind-readers and all sorts of stuff all coming together to try to make these movies. In our case, it’s records and things. It’s a really wonderful group. You should have seen that house on the day we were doing it! Charlotte was doing the makeup for free, bless her. There was hair and makeup upstairs while we were building sets downstairs. It was really fun. It’s a very hands-on project, Creeper, a lot of the time. [laughs]

The funny thing about it is that it’s had more views than lots of videos we’ve spent a lot more money on. [laughs] It’s really cool, it kinda shows that it’s sometimes better to make it yourself. I’d rather make it all myself and not have any external forces and keep it within our little community sometimes. The one thing that our group can do very well is endure and create on a budget. [laughs]

Which part of Sanguivore II: Mistress of Death are you proudest of?

I think by far the most important part of the record is the song Hannah sings, “Razor Wire”. I love that one. I’m trying to work out if that’s because it’s nice not to hear my own voice. [laughs] But it was also a lot of fun writing it. I love writing songs for Hannah. I think she’s done things on this record that she’s never done before, like new parts of her voice she’s opened up. She kills it on that song. It’s also a song where Creeper’s doing a type of music we’ve not really tried before. It’s bluesy and a bit different to other music we’ve written. I think it’s the most accomplished we sound. I’m really proud of everyone’s parts. Hannah came in with this amazing piano part for that and I was just so amazed at her. She’s a real inspiration to play with. When we play in the band, it’s really, really fun all the time because she’s a multi-instrumentalist and she can do loads of stuff. I just love hearing her sing that song. I think she sounds so cool and she’s such a badass.

I think it’s my favourite part of the record. I look forward to it when it comes on and I can’t wait for everyone else to hear her sing it and to do it live. It’s really great when she sings live because I get to have a breather, I normally get to have a beer or half a beer or something and I get to watch the show without me in it, which is amazing because I get to appreciate watching my friends be really great. It’s fun. I’m looking forward to hearing her sing that live.

I never thought of it like that, you get to be a member of the audience for a little bit!

It’s a rare thing in a band. It’s funny, when we play with bands who haven’t seen us live before, they see how much I come off stage and they’re like, “Oh my god, you have the easiest job!” [laughs] I just come on and sing for a bit, then disappear. [laughs]

They’re forgetting about the decapitations and stabbing, it’s heavy lifting.

I know! I don’t get enough credit for the violence. [laughs]

You have some tour dates coming up. You’ll be touring Europe and the UK with Ice Nine Kills in November. What are you looking forward to the most about these shows and taking Sanguivore II: Mistress of Death on tour?

It’s exciting! I’ve never seen Ice Nine Kills before, but I’ve met Spencer and he was really nice. I’m looking forward to seeing their show and seeing The Devil Wears Prada and hanging out as well.

It’s been really weird for Creeper over the years because we’re a strange little band and we do a very particular, strange thing. A lot of the music we are homaging is not in vogue; we’re never gonna be a cool band. We’re never gonna be on the Pitchfork top albums, we’re never gonna be that thing. We’re always a little bit too much or referencing lots of old stuff. It’s started to happen in America a little bit more as well now, which is really exciting because over here in the UK, it happened kinda quickly, where we found this group of people who really got us and really understood. We’ve got this cool, cult fanbase there that’s started to really respond and come to the shows and dress up and partake. We’re starting to find our people, is what we’ve been describing it as. Europe’s been really like that, too for us of late. We just played some headliners in Germany earlier this year and it was sold out. We’re looking forward to coming back out and seeing those kids and playing for them. We have a new record to play for them as well and we’re looking forward to doing our thing and getting together with our European friends out there.

We’ve also not played the UK very much this year either so it’s nice to be back in our home and playing across the country here. It’s super cool to be playing Wembley as well. We got to play Wembley last year which was really cool, but it’s a very rare thing for a band to play Wembley two years in a row or something like that. It’s a really big room and a historic, prestigious place to play so we’re just lucky to do it and lucky to be here. Lucky that we know kids are coming to these shows that do know us and want to hear these new songs. I’m excited about being out supporting our record.

One thing I’m looking forward to is seeing my friends in the band because I haven’t seen a great deal of them. We’ve all been working on the record and we’ll see each other at video shoots and things, but we’re used to seeing each other every day. I’m looking forward to hanging out and drinking beers and being silly with them all. [laughs] I am looking forward to seeing them because we have a lot of fun together. Traveling the world with your friends is one of the coolest things about being in a band, so that’s exciting. And making things together.

The most powerful art is created with friends.

Definitely, 100%. It comes out of a collective.

Is there anything I didn’t ask you that you’d like to add?

The record comes out on Halloween, which is really cool! You can only imagine our delight when we realized that Halloween was on a Friday this year. We’re gonna be back in the United States next year. We’ll be touring basically everywhere next year, very excited to return and play as much as we can. We’ve had a quieter year of touring this year because we made a record and it’s been a lot of business to take care of at home, but we’re really excited about getting back out there. The Sanguivore era is continuing on, so it’s nice to plot that and take that abroad and spread the curse, spread the vampire infection.

Get more cult members!

Exactly!