SINGLE REVIEW: Fear the Lions – Creep
Covers can go very wrong, very easily — especially when you’re taking on something as overexposed and emotionally fragile as Radiohead’s ‘Creep’. But Fear the Lions don’t just cover it; they detonate it. They rip the song from its moody Britpop gloom and rebuild it as a feral, fire-fuelled punk anthem. From the moment it kicks in, it’s loud, frantic, and utterly unrelenting — hammering drums, electrifying guitars, and a breathless, pulse-racing energy that never lets up.
Where the original wallows in self-loathing, Fear the Lions inject it with defiance. The drums stay tight and pulsating as the guitars temporarily slip into the background, giving the vocals room to carry the emotion. And they do — surprisingly well. There’s genuine feeling behind the delivery, a rough-edged honesty that echoes Thom Yorke’s anguish without trying to imitate it. You get the sense the vocalist feels it, that they understand the weight of those words and are spitting them back out with their own fury.
The contrast between the verses and the choruses works brilliantly. The verses simmer with lower-toned restraint, only to explode into full-blown hardcore punk chaos once the chorus hits. It’s exhilarating — a complete adrenaline rush that reimagines the song’s vulnerability as something fierce and unapologetic.
I’m usually vocal about my dislike of covers, but this one completely won me over. Fear the Lions haven’t just reworked ‘Creep’; they’ve reclaimed it. It’s so radically transformed that it took me until the chorus to even recognise it, and by that point, I was too hooked to care. Creative, gutsy, and bursting with life — they’ve taken a song I thought I never needed to hear again and made it sound essential.
