With his recent move to Spotify, Australia’s cult music star has recently been re-recording and remastering many of his old albums, polishing away some of the harsher moments and transforming the brutal DIY sound into something more palatable. While ‘Ashes’ and ‘IV’ have already been given new life, it’s Imbred’s latest rework that has us genuinely excited, because after all, ‘Creep’ is the album that first put his unique and often abrasive musical world on a collision course with our own.
While it’s impossible to tell if ‘Creep’ is Imbred’s true debut record, with his prolific and often erratic creative vibes making any sort of chronology fairly impossible to determine, it’s most definitely the album that started our twisted love affair with his style. An enduring ten-track release, ‘Creep’ arrived as a champion of DIY spirit and individuality, putting up two defiant fingers to mainstream music and his haters, and standing as a burning symbol of creative force, and now, a few years on from its initial release, it’s still just as fierce.
As with his previous re-releases, the sound on ‘Creep’ has been well refined, scraping away some of the destructive grime that initially clung to each song, but leaving all the power and passion. The same avant-garde sound remains, and musically, ‘Creep’ stays close to the rough-cut, grunge-heavy sound that Imbred has made his own. The harsh, unyielding melodies and powerful riffs still shine with the same venomous glisten, particularly on tracks like ‘I Don’t Care’, ‘Anarchy’, ‘Bored’, and the album highlight of ‘Scars’.
One of the constant criticisms of Imbred’s work has always come down to his vocals, and when we first reviewed ‘Creep’, it was noted to be the detracting factor of the release, but with the remaster, his vocals are fitting better than ever. While they might still fall flat and listless in some areas, or border on monotone in others, there is a definitive improvement in the way they resonate, mixing with the instrumentals and hard-cut melodies in a way that they never did before.
Ultimately, ‘Creep’ is still a flawed, but fascinating release, one that captures the synthesis and progression of Imbred’s sound in perfect, uncompromising form. The wonder of the rerecorded version is that you can hear how far Imbred has progressed in just a few short years, proving his artistic and creative worth well beyond what the haters on Reddit initially saw.
You can stream ‘Creep’ today on Spotify, along with the rest of his extensive discography.
Score: 6.5/10
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