DESPITE their name, ‘funeral Punk’ quartet Cadaver Club are live and kicking, releasing their hotly-anticipated new EP, ‘Nine Sweet Angels’, just before Hallowe’en.

“What self-respecting Cadavers would let Hallowe’en pass by without making some music?” said lead singer Mr. Crowe, AKA Kevin McHugh.

Formed in 2012 in Co. Fermanagh, Cadaver Club consists of husband and wife, ‘Mr. Crowe’ ‘and Boom Chic Chic’ (Jolene McHugh) on lead vocals and bass with brothers ‘Dirge’ (Phil Cassidy) and ‘Draggle’ (AKA Folk Rock troubadour Matty James) on guitar and drums respectively.

“We had been tentatively talking at the start of the year about having our third album out for this Octoberm but then the world turned upside down and everyone’s plans changed,” Kevin told The Impartial Reporter.

Not wanting to completely write off 2020, the band did what they always do when plans fall through – they made a new one, which resulted in their new EP.

Kevin explained: “We had two songs recorded way before lockdown which we had set aside for a future non-album release, and we thought we may as well use those for a Hallowe’en EP, so we stole them from ourselves to put on this.

“We’ve no shortage of new songs, so we can always use another two for what we originally had in mind for them,” he added.

The band decided that ‘Nine Sweet Angels’ would be the title track, which they followed up with ‘Scarecrow Down’.

“We wanted another two songs but couldn’t get together because of the pandemic, so we said, ‘Well, let’s record some acoustic songs’. That way, we could all do our parts separately at home and send them off to John Moffatt, at Oaks Recording, to mix and master along with the two electric ones,” said Kevin, adding that it wasn’t “much of a leap” for the band to do it this way as that’s how they normally write their songs and share ideas.

“We build up our parts remotely and when we do get together we have a better starting point and get much more work done in the time we have.”

Multi-talented, Kevin is also well-known for his work as an artist. He used his skills to create the cover art for the EP.

“I started working on the cover art months ago because I had an idea that I knew was going to take a lot of spare time to finish, and spare time isn’t something I have much of,” he said.

“I’ve always wanted to paint a tribute to the old Hanna-Barbera cartoon style and this was the perfect time to do it. I wanted it to look like the title page of a Scooby Doo episode.

“I got to design a really cool-looking hearse for us to cruise around in, too, so I’m well happy with how it came out!”

Challenging

The band also shot a video for the single, which proved challenging as the band members live in different areas, and face different pandemic restrictions.

“That’s not normally a problem, but of course, times have changed. We called Ronan McGrade, who films and directs all our videos, with an idea of how we could make it work and straight away he was figuring out the technical side of things and, sure enough, we got it done,” said Kevin.

“Ronan’s a joy to work with as he’s so creative and completely understands the aesthetic of Cadaver Club and what we need visually,” he told this newspaper.

Cadaver Club’s ‘Nine Sweet Angels’ is out now.