9/3/15

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats: 'The Night Creeper'


Photo by Ester Segarra


On July 15th of this year, I received an email which contained the latest release from one of the world's greatest and yet still underrated cult bands today, Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats. What did I do to deserve this? No, really. My moonshine consumption's gotten out of hand and I really have no idea. Anyway, digression out of the way, I listened to the album repeatedly, all while keeping it secret from my Uncle Acid loving friends about the magic that laid within my Gmail account.

Throughout the album, the band continues too ooze along the path of the 60s and 70s golden age of heavy rock. The tightly wound harmonies of Kevin Starrs aka Uncle Acid and Yotam Rubinger were clear, as if I was listening to this jam on my record player instead of the computer.

Although "I'll Cut You Down" from 2013's goosebumps-producing release, Blood Lust, remains one of my favorite tracks of all time (seriously); "Waiting for Blood", the album's first track, is now a close second. It meekly begins with guitar feedback, then the intro booms into what I can only call the soundtrack of a good trip, or to be honest, that of a thunderous storm.

I only took issue with two tracks on the album. The title track, "The Night Creeper", was probably the most uninteresting songs from Uncle Acid's discography, and unfortunately sits at six minutes and 23 seconds. I kept waiting for the slowly building tension to boil over, but unfortunately what I craved was never satisfied. The eighth track, "Inside", is quite honestly a rip-off from one of my favorite band's, Queens of the Stone Age. Listening to this song, the first, second, and third times, I always seemed to place Josh Homme's voice inside of the song.  "Tangled Up in Plaid" and "Inside" seemingly both have relatively the same opening, which was such a disappointing discovery that I had to get a second opinion.

The outfit continues to spread their psychedelic doom message to to listeners as The Night Creeper, follows "a street-creeping homeless figure, whose story unravels over the course of the album". I can never tell if their albums are potential soundtracks to a torturous murder or a bad LSD trip, but as we all know, one can't only listen to one track from Uncle Acid and move on to something else.

Listen to this one all the way, as a light "Black Motorcade" lies ahead.

Although this album is solid, it is no Blood Lust. With all of that said, it is still worth making the trip to see the band perform on their North American tour (the closest tour date is in September at Metro in Chicago).

Track Listing:
1. Waiting for Blood
2. Murder Nights
3. Downtown
4. Pusher Man
5. Yellow Moon
6. Melody Lane
7. The Night Creeper
8. Inside
9. Slow Death
10. Black Motorcade (hidden track)