Gutenberg's Press Hell
~ Graveyard Shindig
This page features all of what the
liberal press and media is saying about that evil cancer
of an album - Graveyard Shindig. Each review is linked,
so make sure to go visit the sites of those who have
testified to the Creepniks' horror.
__________
The Creepniks, [Graveyard Shindig]:
If you're looking for local dread, try this shivering
shockabilly from [Elkhart]'s Creepniks, where Elvis
and Johnny Cash are reanimated as zombies and tramp
all over the graves of etiquette and decorum. "Surfin'
With Satan" and "Hellbent Sickabilly"
are Texas-infused gothic boogie with more than a nod
to the Cramps.
Darryl
Smyers of the The Dallas Observer - October
2005
__________
From East Texas comes an outfit sounding
like they've crawled out of the Louisiana wetlands.
Graveyard Shindig is sometimes sawing through a surf-y,
beach vibe similar to The Champs or The Trashmen, while
other tracks have a slow R&B sound of the early-to-mid
50s. The first track got me thinking this was going
to be an instrumental record, but vocals kick in every
so often ("Shadow Over Elkhart", "Hellbent
Sickobilly") and give the record a completely different
feel: very Cramps-esque, but with an even thicker Country
Western flavor. Some tracks even have a hint of bluegrass
throughout. While I can groove out on this album, and
I would dig a small, private show, I wouldn't be able
to handle a bar completely filled with Happy Days extras.
Feast
fo Hate and Fear - September 2005
__________
A rather refreshing change-up from
the typical Misfit-ed doowoppery that typically comes
with bright green covers, drippy logos and vows of containing
"pure rock & roll terror!!!", The Creepniks
exude an interesting mulch of twangin' surf rock, parmesan-dusted
spaghetti western strummery and WAY gone psychobilly
slobbering. While the demoniacal Dick Dale-ing of "Surfin'
With Satan" proved my favorite out of nine, there's
no denying that the ravioli'd rumblage of "Pale
Rider" and "Zombie Stomp" are sure to
make Sergio Leone drum along on his coffin lid as well.
"Vocalist" Johnny Lockjaw is mercifully used
rather sparingly - appearing on just over half of GRAVEYARD
SHINDIG's tracks. With a croon that artfully blends
the talents of Lux Interior, Tom Waits and a pregnant
manatee coping with Down's Syndrome while being broiled
alive in dill butter, Lockjaw's talents are best shaken
rather than stirred and, in spite of themselves, make
for the most memorable portions of these ptomaine-tainted
Texans' debut offering. While not something I'll bust
out with the regularity of... say... The Cramps, Mr.
Waits, or any of a variety of cruelly slaughtered Florida
fauna, GRAVEYARD SHINDIG succeeded in dodging my preconceived
stereotypes and is most likely sure to please any horrorbillypsychopunks
out there looking for a new kinda voodoo-broo to fix
up with.
Horrorwood
Babbleon - September 2005
__________
The Catacombs of Paris, the Amityville
house in New York, the Stull Cemetery in Kansas, and
now the town of Elkhart Texas... These are among the
most haunted, ghoul-filled places in the world. The
first three are widely famous, and their stories known
by all. Only a few fearful souls know of the fourth,
but that is about to change... Elkhart now makes this
list, as it is home to a force so evil, and so vile,
that it has been called the "infernal tool of Satan",
that force, is... The Creepniks! Ok, maybe that's a
little over the top, but this band does have a kick-ass
image, and a killer (literally) back-story. Anyway,
what I first thought was just gonna be yet another horror-themed
Surf record (which still would've been fine) has turned
out to be a little bit more. You see, although this
collection of musically inclined members of the undead
do indeed play some creepy-ass Surf-Rock, they also
add in heaping amounts of fetid Psychobilly, and a dash
of o' maggot-encrusted Spaghetti-Western styled instrumentation.
One might not think that these three distinct styles
would sit so well shoulder to shoulder on the same disc
(and often in the same song) but they do just that.
We have four tracks that are strictly instrumentals,
while the other five have been plagued by other worldly
vocals, seemingly supplied from beyond the grave. A
pet peeve of mine is that many bands of this ilk, who
get on board with the whole horror thing, never really
manage to sound creepy. They'll entitle their songs
so they sound like a run-down of the videos for rent
in the horror section of your local Blockbuster, but
the tunes themselves never actually sound creepy in
any way. The Creepniks however have taken up that challenge,
and succeeded with flying colours! These songs actually
sound spine-chilling at times. Hell, you almost expect
to see a zombified Clint Eastwood trudging past your
windows as you play this! Another element that separates
these boys from the pack, is that most Surf bands keep
it pretty up-tempo. The Creepniks on the other hand,
choose to keep it mostly laidback, and eerily low-key.
Great stuff, and a fine debut! Well, it's a debut, and
it isn't, you see this was first offered up as a limited
CD-R release. The artwork was different, and it was
missing the live track "How Do You Sleep?".
However the CD-R originally had six bonus cuts from
other bands on GraveWax Records, so if you have that
version, you still have something special. For more
info on these grave robbing ghouls, check out thecreepniks.com.
RATING = 8 Surf-Rock / Psychobilly (Released 2005)
Urotsukidoji's
Pad September 2005
__________
The Creepniks are
a buncha dead fuckers from East Texas who play hollow-bones
freakabilly with so much more taste and distinction
than the last 666 Misfits grave-robbers
to shuffle up my driveway that they don’t even
NEED the groovy-ghoul angle, really.
I mean, I’m glad they found a gimmick, it makes
t-shirt designs easier, but the ethereal, heat-sick,
warbly, midnight weirdo-ballads they bang out on this
one are like Marty Robbins backed by
the Beasts of Bourbon Orchestra as
conducted by Sergio Leone, and all
they were shooting for was 30 or so minutes of spooky
Cramps-gunk to sell at shows! Seriously,
dig the sparse, dead-man-walking instrumental “Pale
Rider” and tell me you can’t
smell sweat, leather, and Django’s
blood boiling under a hot Mexican sun. “Shadow
over Elkhart” is one of the few vocal
tracks, and it’s a swampy deathbilly dirge that
sounds like Nick Cave’s scariest
Birthday Party ever. And so on. Personally,
I dig the intro-mentals better, if only because the
Creepnik on vox sounds like his rotten larynx is just
gonna drop right out of his ruined, leathery throat
and explode into dust on the floor, and that’s
a little TOO creepy for my tastes.
But when it’s just the lonesome guitars and booming
rhythm section, these fellas will TAKE
you places, Jack. Dark, strange places. So bring a clove
of garlic, just in case.
Sleazegrinder
September 2005
__________
It's always great to find something really interesting
in the mail box - and this week we received the reissue
of The Creepniks - Graveyard Shindig from our friends
at Gravewax Records.
I was already somewhat familiar with
The Creepniks thanks to some tracks that were available
for download a while ago - the most memorable being
"Hellbent Sickobilly" and I'm glad to say
that the rest of the album follows suit. There are several
spooked out instrumentals, some with atmospheric background
soundscapes of growling chuckles and car crashes - but
it's when you get a taste of the Creepniks lyrics that
they really make their mark. The humor is black as pitch
- just the way we like it - as you'll see in the following
excerpt from "Zombie Kinda Love":
Two weeks later I couldn't believe my eyes.
She was standin' in my doorway, lookin' all putrified
She whispered through a mouth of dirt "Hey honey,
did you miss me?"
And then you know what she did, well her cadaver tried
to kiss me!
She was dead... she was dead.
That's what you get when you cross a shovel with a head.
But that talk won't fly, cause the dead don't lie,
When they've got ME... on their mind.
By now I'm sure you've gotten the idea that I'm liking
this album. To make a broad comparison you'll find touches
of The Cramps, Dick Dale - you know - the standards,
without it sounding like they're emulating one or the
other. You can find samples and more lyrics
on the Creepniks web site, and if you check out the
Gravewax site you'll find this for a mere $8.99 shipped
- a deal you'd be hard pressed to beat. So go on now
- get yourself a copy!
For more information visit Gravewax
Records
Final Score: 
Fiendish
Files of the Black Order August 2005
__________
This is the second part in a series
documenting my plan to save rock and roll and myself.
First, myself. I've always been several
years behind the curve, music wise. I get into bands
long after they've passed their peak popularity and
have become yesterday's news. I started listening to
NIN when The Fragile came out, Tool when Lateralus came
out, Garbage when Beautiful Garbage came out, Weezer
after Maladroit, Nirvana long after Cobain was dead.
The unwritten rule is that once a band
has passed a certain audience number threshold the band
is no longer cool. Either they've “sold-out”
or they're still plugging away, but they're not cutting
edge anymore in any case. Cool people are constantly
On The Edge, looking for the next thing (not the next
BIG thing) so they can say “I knew 'em when”
if they become the next big thing. And once the next
thing has become the next big thing it can be disposed
of.
If my plan works I'll no longer be
behind the curve, or over or under the curve, I'll be
ahead of the damned curve.
Next, rock and roll. I'm not going
to be one of the obnoxious people that gets weepy about
the “sad state of music today” every few
months. I listen to my little CD collection waiting
for my favorite bands to come out with new albums and
feel more or less fine. So rock and roll is fine for
me, but I'm not the issue here. Rock's core audience,
white kids, is abandoning it in droves in favor of rap/R&B.
This isn't an anti-rap/R&B screed,
either. Those are pretty dull, or at least mine would
be since I know little about the genres. What I'm trying
to devise is a way to get white kids back into rock
and roll. I'd like to get other ethnic groups into rock
and roll as well, but I have no idea how to do that.
I applied the Socratic method.
Q: What do white kids like?
A: Pissing off their parents. I'm sure this plays some
small part in rap's suburban popularity. Elvis and The
Beatle's don't get much of a rise out of parents these
days. Grunge rock might have pissed the mom and dad
off a little, but they could still hear a vestige of
their own childhood in it. Not so with rap.
Q: What else do white kids like that
also pisses off their parents?
A: Satan. The Father of All Lies always goes over well
with the youth. Whether it's the straight-forward evil
of Ozzy and Alice Cooper or the more ironic devilry
of Marilyn Manson, kids seem to respond to eternal damnation.
Parents, except for the more progressive ones, are almost
always against it.
Q: But Ozzy and Cooper and Manson and
also Rob Zombie are all still around in one form or
another. So what gives?
A: They're not cool anymore. In life the devil you know
is better than the devil you don't. In music the devil
you know is always less promising than the devil the
hot girl at the record store told you about. Also in
music, it's not good enough just to be good. If you
really want to start something you have to be original
too. You need a unique sound. You need to be...
...”PLAYIN' REAL TEXAS PSYCHOBILLY,
SPAGHETTI WESTERN AND SURF.”
Enter...The Creepniks.
In true rock 'n roll style, The Creepniks
cut through the bullshit. Instead of dropping hints
in interviews or liner notes they have an in depth biography
on their web page. The biography, which I will quote
from liberally, leaves few questions about where The
Creepniks came from or what their intentions are. It
also makes them the first band I know of with an origin
story. Some excerpts:
“...It was at one of those [high school]dances
that the delicate veneer of normality exploded with
a force unequaled in the annals of Texas history or
legend.”
“The heat of the house lights
had begun to affect Jake's face; it was blistering and
peeling at the edges. As this rotten facade sloughed
off, the dancers bore witness to something that had
lain dormant for years; the thing that had been found
in that desolate pasture all those years ago. The decayed
cadaver continued to lurch and sing, spewing graveworms
all over the mike and the audience as the flayed features
of the once handsome singer settled into a putrid pile
at his feet. Upon seeing the grim visage and hearing
the unholy shouts of Hellfire, the attendees at the
dance started to panic, running each other over as they
fled for the doors. The rest of the band followed the
decaying frontman's lead, shedding the hollowed bodies
of the band members they had so mercilessly gutted an
hour before. That all-too familiar rune was visible
on their slime-covered faces, leering like skeletons
through a tissue-thin layer of gelatinous skin and grave
wax. The walls trembled with the throbbing pestilence
of their riotous cacophony.”
“...The carnage was total. The
hardwood floors were covered in the flesh and blood-matted
hair of the dancers. The whole scene looked like some
blasphemous collage of anatomy books; a respiratory
system here, a jellied brain there, the whole building
bathed in the sheared-copper smell of teenage blood.
And onstage, the band played on.
In the decades following that brutal
night, the town of Elkhart was quarantined off from
the rest of the world. There was too much danger that
the evil would spread. Sources say that you can still
hear the band play in the now-decrepit gymnasium, now
resembling more than anything the maw of Hell.
And the band plays on forever there, until the end of
times when the Abyss will be thrown wide open to welcome
them back home. Until then, the rest of the world can
only pray that their evil is contained; that the naïve
ears of the populace should never hear their damning
racket or heed their luciferian beckon. That infernal
tool of Satan, the Creepniks!”
http://www.thecreepniks.com/biography.htm
That's it. Were you not rocked? The Creepniks is the
only band I know of that can rock you without making
a sound. Their sounds rock even more.
Just like it says on their page, they're
playin' real Texas psychobilly, spaghetti western and
surf. I don't know what that means exactly but it's
like nothing I ever heard before, or anyone else has
for that matter, and the vocals compliment it nicely.
Their lyrical style isn't reminiscent of EC comics;
it's EC comics with music instead of pictures.
“Two weeks later I couldn't believe
my eyes / she was standin' in the doorway lookin' all
putrefied / she whispered through a mouth of dirt “Hey
honey, did you miss me?” / and then you know what
she did, well her cadaver tried to kiss me” -Zombie
Kinda Love
And there you have it. A band with
a brand new sound and a close personal relationship
with Satan. If the kids don't go for The Creepniks than
rock and roll is deader than dead.
But if The Creepniks make it big it
works out great for me. “Excuse me, girl at party,
but I overheard you discussing The Creepniks. Yeah,
I knew 'em back when they were selling burned LPs from
their web page. Their lead singer, Johnny, sent me some
e-mails back when I was running a zombie web page. I
might still have his e-mail address back at my place...in
my bedroom.” If that's not good enough for at
least a blowjob I'm even uglier than I think.
Ash
Jhonen February 2005
__________
The Creepniks play seven songs, three
of which are moody instros. Vocals on this disc are
the disturbed "Shadow Over Elkhart," the demented
"Hellbent Sickobilly," the twisted "Zombie
Kinda Love," and the almost normal pompous rockabilly
groover "Freaky Friday."
3 "Zombie Stomp" 
Ringing chords open the surf sludge
horror of "Zombie Stomp." Dark, spooky, and
weirded out by Theremin. It's funny how this is able
to just stay this side of the gimmicky line. Grinning
and shuddering at the same time.
Horror Surf Instrumental Stereo
3 "Surfin' With Satan" 
Right from the evil opening laugh,
you know "Surfin' With Satan" will be cool.
It moves at a moderate pace with a slowly double picked
lead playing a fine surf melody. Accompanied by a distant
chorus, it has a slightly desolate edge, while otherwise
portraying the sea settling down after a major storm.
Very cool!
Horror Surf Instrumental Stereo
3 "Pale Rider"
At seeing the title, I had visions
of the Aquamen's "Ride A Pale Horse" set to
reverb. It was not to be. It was not to be. "Pale
Rider" is a slow sludgy surf dirge, a morose death
march with reverb. The down nature of the song is an
inversion of what surf usually is, yet it is quite compelling.
Chilling vibrato, distant chorus, and that ultra slow
pace stretched out for 5-1/2 minutes. It ends up being
a perfect funeral march for a fallen rider.
Horror Surf Instrumental Stereo
Phil
Dirt - Reverb Central June 2003
The Creepniks © 2001-7
