Creepshow Mary – with High Defiance at The Rat – Review

Creepshow Mary

with High Defiance at The Rat
by Scott Hefflon

It attracts a crowd ranging from Metallica patch-wearing metalheads in tight jeans and white high tops to skater/hardcore kids with baseball caps and oversized clothing to the brothers with the crotch of their pants hanging mid-thigh doing that “whoa-whoa” wave thing. Mixing the female populace including poofy heads in skirts to combat boot babes in black. Clever journalists are still trying to nail a label to the style, but the bugger keeps shifting and mutating. Two of the notables in this nameless genre assaulted the Rat in early November. Each took the standard metal recipe and added pinches of this and smidgen of that and cooked up something all their own.

Occasionally billed as the Creeping Mary Show by mistake, Creepshow Mary took to the stage with a booming intro tape and launched into a heavy, heavy groove. At first, it seemed the usual heavy alternative stuff that’s now getting popular, but then, the swaggering singer opened his mouth. A comparison came to mind I thought I’d never make. The spastic dude with the funky ‘do sounds like Jet of Sam Black Church! He’s got the rolling rant-a-thon running along and the “I’m eating the microphone” warbling shouts of Jet’s lower range. (No-dogs-howling-for-miles screeches tossed in liberally, so the similarities end there.)

Technical difficulties prevented one of the guitarists from playing (that’s got to suck, huh?), but not from hanging out at the bar with this industrious-between-shots reviewer. The soundman enjoyed the bass sound so much, he cranked it to 11 so we all felt bulldozers doing donuts on our vital organs all night. FUN, FUN! The guitarist who did get to play had some of the longest damn hair I’ve ever seen flying around. He kept the fretboard masturbation to a minimum and snarled some mean sounding rhythm that got the bodies moving and the heads nodding in agreement. The drummer whaled that stompable beat with a little flash and flair thrown in for good measure. For a little half-naked guy, he sure beats the living hell out of his kit.

The singer had the presence of Anthony of the Chili Peppers and a signature rant/rap. Amazingly tight for a band so young. Without a demo to their name and no media kit to mail to publicity whores who don’t actually go to the shows but plagiarize the promo packs instead, these guys are a surprise blast to the head from outta nowhere. Catch the Creepshow.