“Things might get pretty spooky around here,” Creeper’s acerbic vampire familiar Darcia warns the crowd at tonight’s Wembley spectacular. “Don’t lose your heads.”
There’s a fun irony to this when, the last time Creeper played a one-off show in London, frontman William Von Ghould quite literally lost his head in a spectacular set-piece at the Roundhouse. Almost two years later, there’s even more to get excited about.
Fresh from a U.S. jaunt, they stuff the members of Black Veil Brides in their suitcases for an outrageous pre-Halloween Devil's Night show, also serving as a reunion on the other side of the Atlantic from where they toured together in 2016. As expected, it's a night that comes in any colour, so long as it's black.
In a deviation from the usual, tonight’s opener does not have a single guitar onstage. In fact, they’ve got no instruments at all. The majestic Choir Noir’s power comes entirely from their voices as they hauntingly reimagine metal songs like they’ve never been heard before, with particularly stunning renditions of Deftones’ Minerva and Gojira’s Silvera.
It’s a different shade of spooky from what follows when Creeper rock up – when jets of flame appear the second Ian Miles strikes his guitar strings in Further Than Forever, it’s obvious that they’re not fucking about.