Music Review: Captain Clegg and the NightCreatures
Captain Clegg and The NightCreatures (2009)
Album Release Date: August 28, 2009
Review By: Matt Barnette
Spinal Tap, Eddie & The Cruisers, The Replacements, Citizen Dick – what do they all have in common? They’re bands from movies. Some of them have put out records, some just show up on soundtracks, but never before has a band from a movie been so fully evolved and able to stand on its own merits than the debut release from Captain Clegg and the NightCreatures does.
Jesse “Banjo & Sullivan” Dayton, the chicken-pickin’, Master of the Telecaster behind the Captain character, has played with everyone from Waylon Jennings to Johnny Cash, and all of their influences rub off here with a bucket of zombie blood to give it some much needed strangeness.
Cash’s influence pops up in Day of the Dead, an old school Marty Robbins style story-song of the ill-fated mayor of a nameless Mexican town who made a deal with the Devil to guarantee his election, and the days leading to his having to repay his end of the deal.
Zombie A Go-Go comes quick and pounds the driving beat and sing-song chorus of its namesake into your brain, not letting up until you’re singing it to yourself and laughing when you realize it has it’s hooks in you. Transylvania Terror Train is a treat of classic rockabilly style with an edge that only comes with having been surrounded by a lifetime of ghouls and goblins, as only the venerable Captain could properly articulate.
This record has a few tracks that could probably take more of a backseat, but overall this album is catchy, original, and most importantly memorable. With or without the accompanying tie-in of the Halloween 2 movie that Clegg and his Creatures pop up in throughout, this album could and would stand up and walk amongst the living on its own.
It’s a quick dose of what they’ve got in them and I really hope they take the time in the future to put out further releases.
For the “Too Long, Didn’t Read” crowd: Captain Clegg and the NightCreatures. Psychobilly horror twang. Runs about Thirty minutes and a great deal for the $8.99 it’s selling for on Amazon.
Halloween 2, and Rob Zombie Presents: Captain Clegg and the NightCreatures’ album both come out August 28th. You can read our exlusive interview with the band here.
Brutal As Hell Rating:
4 out of 5
