Newcastle, UK quartet CREAK has today shared their new single and music video, A Head Full of Rain. A Head Full of Rain is the second track to be taken from the metalcore/nu-metal group's forthcoming debut album, Depth Perception, which is set for release on August 18 via Prosthetic Records. CREAK's latest music video sees their volatile meshing of genres pull influence from nineties aesthetics, with the clip directed by Joe Guppy.
WATCH THE MUSIC VIDEO FOR A HEAD FULL OF RAIN BELOW.
Stream A Head Full of Rain via Apple Music, TIDAL, Deezer, Bandcamp and Spotify
Pre-order Depth Perception here.
Speaking on A Head Full of Rain's creative process, CREAK guitarist Reece 'Moose' Boakes comments: "Originally this song was written as the last track in the recording sessions as an end to the album without any intentions of it being a single. However, once we got further into the track, and because of it being at the end of that recording cycle, it felt like a time-stamp of where the band was at after going through the learning process of making a full album and where we'll be heading next with the project."
Vocalist Jack Dunn adds: "Lyrically and tonally throughout the album I’d talked a lot about my mothers battle with cancer, and some of my own struggles watching her fight it. On the majority of Depth Perception's songs we tried to approach it through a art-house horror filter that we’ve referenced a lot in our material to date and through the use of imagery that matched those feelings.
"With this song being written as the end of the album I wanted it to be blunt and directly get across what I was trying to say with this is album, that I’m terrified of losing my mother. I felt like I had to get those feelings out, and I didn’t want to try and cover it in anything even though it made this song uncomfortable."
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.