Review Summary: Tries very hard to be My Chemical Romance but yeah, not quite.
Creeper is a gothic-themed pop punk band, and for their sophomore effort, they decided to be more ambitious and make this release a concept album. It is about an angel who comes down to a small town to warn of an upcoming apocalypse but instead falls in love and turns to sin. Again, this is certainly an ambitious release, but unfortunately, it doesn’t fully work.
However, one thing
Sex, Death and the Infinite Void undoubtedly succeeds in is the powerful, hook-filled vocals that are provided by the charismatic frontman, Will Gould. Every hook and melody he sings is sung with absolute confidence. From the simply catchy hooks of
Annabelle to the bombastic and climatic
Black Moon, the vocal work single-handedly carries the album. Even the co-vocalist, Hannah Greenwood, is excellent. Her vocal harmonies are perfect for the band's sound and provide a great dynamic against Gould’s vocals. She is given the spotlight in the song
Four Years Ago and delivers the album's best ballad by far.
What the album mainly falters on are the lyrics, and therefore the concept as a whole. While yes, some tracks and moments on the album do show that there is a story being told, the vast majority of the lyrics here read like your typical pop punk song and are really not that interesting. The spoken-word interludes do not make things any better either. Despite the fact that they do add to the story, they just sound too cheesy to take seriously. The otherwise great 60’s pop-inspired tune
Thorns of Love is ruined by one of these spoken word sections that is jammed between the track's last two choruses.
The album starts and closes off fairly well with catchy cuts such as
Be My End and
Napalm Girls but the record really drags in the middle, with a couple exceptions.
Paradise features some truly awful lyrics that not even Gould’s charisma can save, and
Poisoned Heart is largely an uninspired and forgettable listen. What some of these weaker tracks are lacking is the infectious punk rock energy of their debut. Instead, the band replaced that with some Americana influences that, while does provide a new sound to the band, compromised the band's kinetic style in a couple tracks. The absence of any really memorable guitar riffs makes this issue even more noticeable and prevalent.
Overall, if you are looking for a fun pop punk album filled with sugary hooks, this will not be a bad album to give a go, even if their debut did it better. However, the lyrics are mostly boring, and the spoken word interludes are an easy skip. The punkier cuts are few and far between, which is what the band is best at, but the vocals do make the whole album a lot better and more memorable than it otherwise would have been.
