Album Review: Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats- The Night Creeper

Uncle Acid & the deadbeats

The Night Creeper

** out of *****

We have discussed this before, but there is such a fine line between homage and blatant rip off. On Uncle Acid & the deadbeats newest album The Night Creeper (their 4th studio offering) the strains of retro looking rock and roll are everywhere. It is one thing to worship Black Sabbath and try to incorporate what makes them great into your work, it is another to sound so much like them it becomes derivative.

The group, a four piece from Cambridge, England, attack stoner rock with a dark twist, themselves likening this album to a grimy pulp novel that would cost a quarter. The music comes out fuzzy as the sludgy opening "Waiting For Blood" sets the tone of things to come. The band gets its drone on for "Murder Nights" and showcase their more heavy-metal-from-the-80's influences for "Melody Lane".

Lyrically the story of a murderer unfolds behind layers of filters, often the vocals just act as an extra wall of sound. There is a quirky instrumental complete with pianos called "Yellow Moon" and the stretched out, appropriately titled, "Slow Death" which runs for over nine minutes. The best track of the bunch is "Uncle Pusher" which amps up the heaviness and incorporates a first class guitar solo.

Overall the disk is not poor, it just has a feeling of "been there done that" to it. If smokey retro rock is your bag, or you can't find you copy of Master of Reality, then give The Night Creeper a try.
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Heard good things, thought I would dig this one more, didn't really work for us, but that shouldn't stop you from supporting the band, buying the album or peeping some video below: