THE MISSION CREEPS: media

For Booking/Inquiries
themissioncreeps@gmail.com Phone
520.405.7796

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Hey girls and ghouls, ready to wake up the dead? The Cramps coined this phrase during a show in 1995. The band has been credited by some as being one of the founders of the gothabilly/surf rock movement. Whether that is true I don't know, but the Cramps' unique mix of fun-loving surf sound, rough bellowy vocals and a focus on horror/monster themes has largely influenced the sound of many bands today. Bands like The Horrors, My Bloody Valentine and the Tucson band The Mission Creeps credit The Cramps as having had the largest impact on their music.

The Mission Creeps stay true to the classic surf rock style coined by The Cramps, using zombie inspired themes (check out the tracks "Graveyard Shift" and "Empty Coffin"), fast tempos and bluesy guitar riffs. The lead singer, James Arrr, has the perfect voice for this genre of music — a little Elvis mixed with some Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash. The band manages to stand out from the growing crowd of gothabilly and surf rock bands with their use of a multitude of instruments: accordion, theremin, harmonica and percussion, as well as a live show that includes gyrating go-go dancers and B-movie inspired theatrics. It looks like somebody's got a case of the zombies!

"It's an open door to some orgasmic music, music that was made in the way Tarantino makes movies, millions of gimmicks put together reminding of what we love in music.. The Mission Creeps . . . are from Tucson Arizona . . . concert halls are not by millions, neither are bands, just a few remaining warriors objective enough not to forget their first loves, watching Bill Murray's movies while listening to The Stray Cats."

The union between horror movies and rock music has always been fecund, often producing unholy offspring of surpassing quality. Despite the 1983 dissolution of genre titans the Misfits, there's still a rabid audience for cartoon ghouls and songs about reanimated corpses, and bands like Arizona's Mission Creeps still ply their horror-rock trade with necromantic alacrity. The hepcat heptet combine surf rock, punk, and the Doors, topping it off with an eerie dosage of Ennio Morricone–inspired gunfight licks that fit seamlessly into the band's tales of desert-highway depravity. Halloween comes early this Oct. 8 at the Elbo Room, so grease up your devil lock. (Richardson)

“. . . the tour de force of guitarist/singer James Arrrgh, guest keyboardist Namoli Brennet, bassist Frankie Stein, conga drummer Gore Ya, and new drummer Sinful Bryn had the crowd at Surly Wench toasting to necrophilia and singing along to their unofficial theme song, Creepy.”

"The Mission Creeps are for fans of the Cramps, Bauhaus, spooky surf-rock, select Doors songs, and low-budget horror flicks from the 60's and 70's."

"The Mission Creeps blend the spookiness of Deadbolt and The Ghastly Ones with the suave lyrical delivery of The Flaming Stars and Lux Interior."

“The Mission Creeps are another local band that has transitioned from good to great. Check 'em out.”

And the real treat of the evening came last when Tucson's Mission Creeps gave a performance that nobody would forget. Not content to just be a band playing Cramps-inspired, spooky garage tunes, the Creeps added a backdrop of artfully juxtaposed film and two slow-mo, in-sync backup dancers in nursey garb. Never have I heard a more perfect cover of "Bela Lugosi's Dead" before. Needless to say, they nailed the Cramps cover ("Goo Goo Muck") too. The dual drummers were a nice touch and filled out the band's sound perfectly. After the last note was played, enthusiastically applauding converts could be heard murmuring how they would definitely be at the Creep's Halloween show at Plush. And it must have been Triangle L resident and uuber DJ Kidd Squidd who bellowed, "What a perfect way to end the night!"

"Mission Creeps play organ-driven, menacing surf rock, sometimes with go-go dancers, fronted by a singer who resembles a younger, less-dead version of Roy Orbison."

CD REVIEWS

Horror surf garage rock with bluesy bits, and theremin, yay! It’s hard to tell how seriously to take these folks – a lot of it’s great fun, but some of it is fairly depressed. Lo-fi, in that there’s no attempt to make the vocals sound perfect (singer has a decent voice, mind you), and there’s definitely a major Cramps element.
Review by Track.
I like 3 and 9 a lot.
1. **starts with lots of theremin and electronics (spooky noises) then midtempo creepy surf rock. Definite homage to the Cramps, quite lo-fi.
2. *frug-a-go-go in the graveyard. Nice vocal harmonies, straightforward garage rock, Nuggets-oid.
3. ****fun ultra-slow oozing stroll, farfisa, fun lyrics.
4. *long congas intro, guitar and squeepy theramin... slow, downbeat. The spiderhole may be vaguely related to a wormhole, but it’s hard to tell.
5. *very quiet intro, whispery noises very slowly building to extremely slow, somewhat bluesy crawl. Quite convincing, but I’m not sure of what, exactly.
6. ***squeeps for a moment, then fuzz-rock. Do the pony! But watch out for the blood.
7. **starts with very quiet guitar, downtempo waltz, depressed pirate song with accordion. Arrr!
8. ***jaunty guitar and vocals intro, then bouncy, bluesy bop with harmonica.
9. ****bouncy, bluesy “working in the coal mine” meets “I’m a lumberjack” polka with cowbell.
10. *melancholy guitar and piano, slow, sad, and of course, weird.
11. **several seconds of near-silence, then bits of spooky noises, slow bluesy crawl. Instrumental with hauntings. Theremin wind noises for last 30 seconds.

In recent months, the five-piece band--James Arrr (vocals, guitar, theremin), Miss Frankie Stein (bass, accordion), Becca "The Beastmaster" Horton (vocals, harmonica), Goya "Ditchrider" Kenny and Bryn "Mr. Furious" Jones (drums)--has made its name with its dynamic, theatrical live shows, in all their faux-gothic, campy, B-movie horror-flick glory. In other words, those shows are shtick-heavy affairs, and we all know that sometimes that doesn't translate so well to a recorded product.

The day of reckoning for The Mission Creeps arrives this week, in the form of In Sickness and in Health, the band's debut CD, on Refractory Records.

It pleases me greatly that the disc doesn't require me to be the bearer of bad news, as the album is far more satisfying than one might guess, given the band's M.O. Even without the dazzle of The Mission Creeps' live show, the songs stand on their own quite nicely, thanks.

Like a toned-down version of the Cramps by way of Deadbolt, the twangy, reverb-heavy guitar, Arrr's genuinely sexy bellowing croon (à la Bauhaus' Peter Murphy) and the band's grinding rhythms all add up to something more than your standard clad-in-black, death-obsessed affair. The majority of songs here are slow-burning grinders that ooze sexual tension (even if they feature song titles like "Case of the Zombies," "You Make Me Sick" and "Graveyard Shift"), though there are some exceptions. "Empty Coffin" is 2 1/2 minutes of fuzzed-out guitar and lusty male/female vocals that brag about ownership of a money tree (but nowhere to plant it) and a '57 Chevy. "The Sheets to the Wind" is a sea chantey abetted by an accordion, while harmonica is put to good use on "The Crussian."

Recorded by Jim Waters at his Waterworks West studio, In Sickness and in Health stands as a fine representation of this genre, which can easily devolve into its trappings at the expense of songs. Much to their credit, The Mission Creeps prove here that they've got the songs to transcend those trappings.

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