Newcastle, UK band CREAK has today announced their signing to Prosthetic Records, with plans to release their debut album Depth Perception on August 18. Alongside the signing and album announcement, CREAK has shared the lead single Restless Dreams with an accompanying music video directed by Zak Pinchin. On their first full-length CREAK present a volatile mix of nu-metal, hardcore and metalcore, and Depth Perception is sure to propel CREAK towards the upper echelons of the UK underground.
Stream Restless Dreams via Apple Music, TIDAL, Deezer, Bandcamp and Spotify
Pre-order Depth Perception here.
Speaking on the signing, CREAK vocalist Jack Dunn comments: “Releasing our debut album on Prosthetic is something that all of us are really excited about. It means a lot to us that we can have a release on a label alongside bands that we’re not only fans of but that we’ve also been influenced by. We really feel we’ve found a home for the band with Prosthetic.”
Of the album announcement, Patrick Morton (guitar) continues: “We had the album name Depth Perception before we actually started the album officially. After looking at the EP in hindsight and a lot of the stuff lyrically we dealt with on the album, we gained a lot of new perspectives and where all really into that as a name for whatever the next project was going to be.”
Dunn continues: “The album overall focuses on dealing with family illness and trauma, and for me personally my internal struggle in a lot of those situations. Feeling guilty about my own emotions, and going over things in a circle in my own head, trying to get to a point where I can try to become comfortable with them. The album was a way for me to get a lot of that negativity out.”
The four piece from Newcastle set out initially to craft a new EP to follow on from 2020’s rapturously-received Bitter Picture vignette, but once writing was underway, the ideas kept on coming. Channeling the same furious vitriol found on their earlier singles and the EP, CREAK managed to push their boundaries further still – finding room for experimentation within their chaotic vision. Citing influences such as Yüth Forever and Sworn In, their background in hardcore is rarely far from view, but eerie Lynchian interludes, clean vocals and metallic sensibilities contribute additional layers that elevate their sound.
Of the Lynchian elements, CREAK comments on the Restless Dreams music video: “We worked with Zak Pinchin again, as we’d built a really good relationship with him on our previous videos, and he was into nearly all of the media we were taking influence from. We watched a lot of old ‘arthouse’ horror films like Blood of a Poet or anything from David Lynch and we were really inspired by how desperate the tone of those works felt.
“With the band, we never wanted the horror element to be for the sake of having it for shock value. What we liked about those films was how they got across those feelings of anxiety or dread just by how they looked, and we wanted to try and capture some of that.”
Lyrically and thematically the tracks are saturated with pure emotion, fuelled by – amongst other things – the anguish that accompanied Dunn’s mother’s journey with cancer. Using CREAK as an outlet for processing his feelings during that time, he adds: “I was feeling guilty about my own emotions, and going over things in a circle in my own head trying to get to a point where I could try to become comfortable with them.” Finding it easier to work through his feelings through his lyrics than to verbalise in ‘real life’, Depth Perception is something of an anthology of dread, pain, mortality – and hope.
The album took shape over several months between 2021 and 2022, with Connor Sweeney (formerly of Loathe) reprising the role he took on for Bitter Picture, producing, mixing and mastering the twelve blistering tracks. The live recording achieves the near-impossible task of capturing the frenetic, unbridled vigor of their live show; their angular metalcore punctuating an eerie soundscape permeated with anxious energy. With high hopes and boundless enthusiasm, CREAK are gathering pace as an unstoppable force.
Depth Perception tracklist:
1. Crossroads
2. Hare in the Woods
3. An Endless Black
4. Doomed
5. Restless Dreams
6. Harrow
7. Left to Heaven
8. Depth Perception
9. The Early Hours Know My Secrets
10. Cold Shoulder
11. I’m Not Alone in the Dark
12. A Head Full of Rain
