Just in time for the spookiest time of year, Indian Handcrafts' Creeps is a dark, horror-filled homage to 1980s metal. They combine blistering guitars with guttural vocals to create a sound that pays tribute to their metal forebears without being a complete throwback record. The first single, "Its Late Queeny," definitely has a more modern feel than most of the record, sounding more like a Queens of the Stone Age track than, say, Iron Maiden. However, once you start getting deeper into Creeps, the really fun '80s metal starts.
Case in point: the spooky, mythological "Snake Mountain" has everything you want in an over-the-top metal song, including monsters, pulsing guitar riffs, huge drums and a wild turnaround about halfway through the track. It's in these moments that Creeps really soars as a record, as on the mammoth track "The Divider," on which chugging raw guitar gives way to a very '80s solo, with affected acoustic rhythm guitar and everything.
If anything, Indian Handcrafts should have more of these moments on the record, to revel more in the grandiose nature of a genre they obviously love.
(Sargent House)Case in point: the spooky, mythological "Snake Mountain" has everything you want in an over-the-top metal song, including monsters, pulsing guitar riffs, huge drums and a wild turnaround about halfway through the track. It's in these moments that Creeps really soars as a record, as on the mammoth track "The Divider," on which chugging raw guitar gives way to a very '80s solo, with affected acoustic rhythm guitar and everything.
If anything, Indian Handcrafts should have more of these moments on the record, to revel more in the grandiose nature of a genre they obviously love.