By: Si Forster
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Released on February 27, 2015 via Jezus Factory
It’s almost bizarre to contemplate nowadays that sometimes, bands just come to an end. Most either briefly explode before hastily regrouping when the money runs out, or carry on ceaselessly with most proving the Law of Diminishing Returns in a terribly spectacular way previously only seen with the original Planet Of The Apes films. So when Belgium’s Creature With The Atom Brain announced Night Of The Hunter to be their latest and last record, it was taken with a mixture of anticipation of new music, some sadness that it’s all being knocked on the head, and no small amount of respect for knowing that the curtain’s coming down.
With the lineup for this new record being pretty much stripped right back to mainman Aldo Struyf and drummer Jean-Philippe de Gheest (both of whom have spent much of the past few years together as part of Mark Lanegan’s touring band, Aldo having been part of that particular setup for over a decade now) with a host of friends and guests coming along for the final hurrah. This approach could have seen Night Of The Hunter ending up as a bit of a mixed bag of an album, but thanks to the rather odd way that this has all been put together, it’s their most cohesive record to date.
This cohesion becomes apparent for purchasers of the vinyl version of this record, as groove-watching nerds (and I am happy to admit that this may well be in a minority group consisting of me and nobody else) will notice that there is no indication of any pause between tracks on either side. This is because although Night Of The Hunter is presented as a five-track affair, the reality of it is that there are only (sort of) two, with each part of each side blending into one another and only a change of personnel differentiates between the various, and untitled, parts.
In essence, this is probably the most “Creature With The Atom Brain” record that Aldo has released. Side A’s Part 1 starts off with a locomotive beat that will sound familiar to fans of their previous two albums (Transylvania and Birds Fly Low), but with added flourishes and a sixties garage mentality that looks a bit further back to their I Am The Golden Gate Bridge groundbreaker, turning the whole affair into a strange mix of the familiar and unexpected. Longterm collaborator Mark Lanegan once more lends his pipes to the rockier half of the first side and yet again sounds utterly at home with the gentle weirdness that’s going on around him, handing over the reins to a couple of other previous CWtAB collaborators, artist Danny Devos and Aldo’s Millionaire compadre Tim Vanhamel, for the much more urgent and downright scary second part that harkens back to the band’s early days.
It’s perhaps fitting that the most surprising part of the album is the gentler second side, although it’s no less full of surprise, as it’s a rather laid-back affair starting off with dEUS’s Tom Barman fronting a dusky affair that comes across like a slightly psychedelic and mildly threatening Afghan Whigs, which morphs (and it doesn’t sound like it should do, but it does!) into a brassy, sexy tango led by Big Dave Reniers. It’s also fitting that the final part should be led by the Creature himself, Aldo Struyf taking the final vocal bow for himself with a busy piece that takes in as much of the previous three albums as seven and a half minutes will politely allow, starting off almost as an unrepentant and unyielding funeral march that becomes bigger and rockier to a raucous crescendo before paring (almost) everything right back and bringing the whole story of Creature With the Atom Brain with the line “I’ve got to go my friend, goodbye”.
Do I feel sad at the band’s passing? Not really – they did what they did and now they’re off doing something else, and sometimes that’s the best way for things to be. Whatever Aldo does next, I look forward to finding out what it’s going to sound like. And with Night Of the Hunter, it’s a farewell that older fans will digest with fondness and serves well as something to get newer listeners to fork out for a back catalogue rich in strangeness and fun.
