Putting the ‘Fun’ in Funeral

Anyone planning their soundtrack for last weekend’s Halloween chimed the death knell of delight in welcoming the latest spooktacular offering from Fermanagh-based funeral punks, Cadaver Club.

‘Nine Sweet Angels’ from the new four-track EP by ‘Cadaver Club’ was released last week with an accompanying and suitably spine-tingling video.

The gleefully ghoulish quartet of Kevin McHugh, who goes by the stage name ‘Mr Crowe’ (vocals) and wife Jolene/ ‘Boom Chic Chic’ (bass), along with brothers Matty James/ ‘Dirge’ and Phil/ ‘Draggle’ Cassidy on drums and guitar, have been haunting the airwaves since forming in 2013.

The band have toured the UK and Ireland comprehensively since then, performing at the world’s largest independent punk festival ‘Rebellion’. They’ve also released two studio albums, part-funded by their ever-growing fanbase- ‘A Fate Worse Than Life’ (2013) and ‘It’s Always The Quiet Ones’ (2016)- as well as a live album recorded at the legendary Hope & Anchor in Islington -’Lunatics In London’ (2014)- to list but a few of their posthumous achievements.

The magnificently malignant ‘Nine Sweet Angels’, released on Pirate Heart Records, is the band’s first new track in several years, with the video filmed by Ronan McGlade Photography on location at Big Dog Forest in Derrygonnelly.

Kevin fully accepts that dressing up in ghastly make-up is a rare sight to behold in picturesque rural Fermanagh.

“You get some strange looks alright, that’s for sure,” laughs Kevin.

Following in the footsteps of genre-defining punk bands like the Misfits and the Damned, the Kevin was drawn to the idea of “Hallowe’en every day” growing up in a large family where October 31 was celebrated with aplomb, with all of the neighbours’ kids also arriving to partake in the fun.

“Hallowe’en was always a big deal around our house, and come the end of the evening you could have a couple dozen children about the place,” he remembers back.

But 2020 has been a strange year for bands like Cadaver Club, and everyone else for that matter.

Kevin matter-of-factly doesn’t see a return to playing live until 2022 at least.

His advice to all in the creative industries is to not lose heart and continue to “do what they do best. For bands, it’s make music. For artists it’s making art, writers write. Everything else just gets in the way.”

The release of ‘Nine Sweet Angels’ capped a busy month for Kevin.

A professional artist whose horror themed work adorns Cadaver Club’s distinctive album covers and merch, he and friend Bob Kerrigan also published a collection of darkly humorous rhymes and illustrations titled, ‘The Twins Little Book of Death’.

Delivered through the eyes of enigmatic observers ‘The Twins’, the book, published through the Kevin and Jolene’s Hollow Hill Apparel, revolves around a remarkably creative myriad of ways of shuffle off this mortal coil.

“I’ve always loved dark humour,” explains softly spoken Donagh-native Kevin. “Songs, poetry, and stories as well, but especially when they don’t take themselves too seriously.”

He cites the likes of multi-award winning American film director, producer and artist Tim Burton’s ‘The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories’ as a point of inspiration, a tip of the pall-bearers’ cap that to produce work of such ilk was in fact “okay” and socially acceptable.

Another pointed to by Kevin is Edward St. John Gorey, who garnered international recognition for his characteristic pen-and-ink drawings often depicting vaguely unsettling narrative scenes in Victorian and Edwardian settings.

The genesis of the book came after Kevin, who carries a lyric book wherever he goes, texted Bob a four line ditty filled with sinister whimsy. The response came the next day, and in kind with Bob composing a short poem of his own and in the same vein.

“I thought ‘He gets it’!” says Kevin, who with his newfound accomplice, penned dozens more over the coming years, before finally concluding that they had enough to fulfil a publication.

Kevin admits that the delay was in part caused by piling the pressure on himself to deliver just the right look of ‘The Twins’ characters he had envisioned.

“Every couple of years I’d go back to it and draw and draw and draw, make changes here, make changes there, and it’d end up with me just closing the cover over for another while.”

Summer 2019, post-arrival of Kevin and Jolene’s own son Bodhi, that Kevin sat down again and took another stab at delivering.

“I’m always painting and drawing for someone else, so it’s rare I’d have the time. I started getting up an hour or two earlier, doing two hours of my own work, and then settling into whatever was on the table, or commissioned for.”

He’s understandably delighted with the independently published book and how it’s turned out.

For some Hallowe’en is just another date on the calendar, one where the creeping menace of increased commercialisation is scarier than the date itself. But for others, Hallowe’en is the annual equivalent to Christmas.

“That’s exactly right. I was determined to make it happen in time for Hallowe’en if nothing else. That was my mark on the calendar, it was a date set in stone, and I suppose a good one for something like this.”

He adds that anyone who has bought the book to date has enjoyed it, with sales boosted through the affiliation through Cadaver Club.

“People who like the music know what they’re buying into, and enjoy that dark sense of humour already. So it’s a helpful crossover.”