The Creepshow has been tearing up venues with their horror-inspired psychobilly since 2005.
If these songs were solid forms they'd crush your face. They'd break your neck. They have all the danger of a Texan with a chainsaw and they demand audience participation.
They've played to thousands of eager music fans in 25 countries that are keen to gobble up all that The Creepshow is spewing out.
"We never really experience like a really terrible show where we're feeling like we'll never go back ever again," says the fishnet-lovin' Creepshow vocalist Sarah "Sin" Blackwood, "unless someone threatens one of us, but that hasn't happened. Everywhere is actually pretty good."
Alongside Sean "Sickboy" McNap (stand-up bass and vocals), Matt "Pomade" Gee (drums) and "The Reverend McGinty" (keyboards/vocals) she is on a balls-out, four-week tour across North America before heading off to take on Europe...again.
The band was formed in Burlington in 2005 by McNap, Gee, the Reverend and Blackwood's sister Jen. They released one album under the original line-up, 2006's Run for Your Life . Blackwood herself had spent four years rocking about Whistler but returned east to pursue her own music career.
"The music scene is really restricted in Whistler, as far as being an actual" she says. "There's Guitar Doug, who is amazing, but unless you're doing the kind of thing that he's doing, you can't really move forward as a musician in Whistler."
She plucked away at a solo career in Toronto and took over vocal duties in The Creepshow after her sister left to have a baby. With Blackwood on board, they released 2008's Run For Your Life and launched the never-ending tour that has characterized the last few years.
Life on the road can definitely be difficult, says Blackwood, who admits to being totally beat after being on the road virtually non-stop for four years, with a month or two off at a time. Imagine that! It can get just a weensy bit tiresome.
"It's become just a little bit too much being out all the time, constantly on the road, living out of a suitcase," she says from tour stop, of course, in Kelowna. "
Since the 2008 release, they've played alongside punk luminaries Rancid and Anti Flag. Blackwood released two solo albums, 2008's Way Back Home and 2010's, Wasting Time . The band followed up with their third album They All Fall Down that October.
Blackwood says the touring is so hectic they have no time to write on the road. That typically happens three weeks before recording - they sit down together and blaze through a writing session. They lay out the tracks, put the album out, then head out on tour again. And again.
"Most punk bands have to work really hard in order to get yourself out there," she says. "Things are changing with the YouTube and that kind of thing but for the most part, for the last little while, we've had to constantly tour to make sure people know who we are, to make money and keep our music out there."
Time has been flying as fast as their songs. Blackwood says the past eight months since They All Fall Down was released have completely passed her by. She laughs about it now, amused but also a little perplexed.
"The touring thing is going to get toned down a little bit," she says. "We all need a little bit of a break, to be honest. We're working really hard, take a step back and chill out a little bit."
