Okay well! Here’s the actual essay:
(Note that I'm going to use xe/xir pronouns for the narrator in this post to differentiate from the plural they used for the zombies and for the collective they of the narrator and xir dad)
The tone of the song presents the events as a badass revenge adventure the narrator is sharing with xir dad. The "fucking zombies" have taken the home and business that are rightfully theirs, leaving them homeless as a pack of monsters uses their property for their own aims. Through the narrator and xir dad's connection to and knowledge of the place, they work together to reclaim it and defeat the monsters.
However, one detail in the first verse begins to cast all of this in a more questionable light. The inciting incident to all of this was the narrator's dad betting the graveyard in a game of cards. The zombies won the graveyard, presumably fair and square, through a bet the narrator's father freely entered. His and his child's situation is unfortunate, but is the direct result of a risk he chose to take.
The zombies are also clearly sapient. They're intelligent enough to win a game of cards, to have friends, and to rent out property to said friends and use currency for the transaction. Dead or undead, monstrous or not, the zombies are clearly people.
In light of these facts, the father's choice to respond with violence to re-kill the zombies and take his property back isn't an act of righteous comeuppance. It becomes simple theft and murder justified by evoking the victims' monstrosity, and thus their lack of right to the property they won from him. Based on the line "This/ ain't the first time/ we have/ had to start a fight with/ creatures of the night," this isn't an isolated incident, either. The narrator's father shows a pattern of treating the inhabitants of the cemetery with violence.
The narrator doesn't seem to realize any of this. In gloating that "my dad could beat up your dad", xe marks xirself as likely being quite young. Xe also seems to have great connection with and pride in xir dad and the things they share: "No one knows this cemetery/better than my dad and me." Throughout the song, xe presents xirself and their father almost as a single unit, and certainly as a team against their foes. While xe reports the detail that the situation was xir dad's doing, xe glosses over that in favor of the camaraderie xe feels with him as they attack the zombies. Xir youth and loyalty to xir dad leads xir to ignore the zombies' personhood (see the frequent insults towards them in the lyrics) and their legitimate claim to the property, and to instead join him in killing them to overturn the results of the card game and re-establish the status quo.
Creatures of the Night is an extremely fun song, but I can't help but imagine how different it would be from the zombies' perspective. Elsewhere in the Forgetmenauts' discography, songs are deeply sympathetic to monsters who are mistreated for their perceived inhumanity. Switch the POV and this song could easily be another Gay Werewolf Murder Ballad, sans the cathartic revenge the werewolf achieves.
In Creatures of the Night, the revenge is on the part of the powerful. When the narrator and xir dad win their fight, all will be well again, while the zombies will be dead and/or buried and the narrator of GWMB will always have to grieve his love. While GWMB is tragic and dramatic even as the narrator gets their revenge, Creatures of the Night is upbeat throughout. Both are stories about groups of people who are othered and who aren't entitled to the full benefits of humanity and society because of it, from differing perspectives and with differing results.
But even more than that, I think Creatures of the Night is a story about how that otherness is perpetuated across generations. The narrator loves and trusts xir father, who treats the zombies with disdain and violence. Because of this, xe blames the zombies and not xir father for xir situation and joins him in trying to right that perceived wrong. Guided by xir father, xe sees attacking them as at worst a necessary preservation of the rightful order and at best an adventurous bonding experience. And presumably, one day the child will grow up to inherit the graveyard and run it the same way xir father does— that is, by enacting power upon its inhabitants and doing whatever xe finds necessary to maintain it.
