Spider Kitten – A Pound For The Peacebringer
Spider Kitten – A Pound For The Peacebringer
APF Records
Release Date: 01/09/23
Running Time: 40:41
Review by Dark Juan
10/10
Once upon a time, believe it or not, Dark Juan did not write for Ever-Metal.com. Dark Juan wrote for another well-known UK based webzine before getting unceremoniously fired after writing a piece that had been requested in Dark Juan’s signature style (you know, stream of consciousness bollocks, impish (read childish) sense of humour and a healthy disregard for any form of fame whatsoever) where I mocked the name of some second-rate Black Metal band’s lead singer (As I recall I gave them 7/10 which wasn’t bad and he should have been fucking GRATEFUL) as he had called himself Sturmgeist Fornicator Insultus, or some other cosmically stupid but phonetically similar treatment, whereupon the wanker got a massive monk on at Dark Juan for taking the piss out of him. But come on! Storm Ghost! Fornicator! Insultus! His very last name invites ridicule all by itself, considering he got his frilly knickers in a knot about Dark Juan’s frankly more gentle than usual mocking of him for a fucking SILLY name. Fornicator – one thinks that the pasty faced, pipe cleaner limbed youth was getting none of that! Hence the desire to have it in his name. Sturmgeist is pretty cool though, if you were in an WWII Jadgeschwader in the Luftwaffe flying a fucking Bf109 against the RAF in 1940. When will Black Metal bands understand that having daft names is fun and amusing to everyone who isn’t a Black Metal fan and it doesn’t make you all hard and tough to wear big nails on your arms and make up on your visage. And this is coming from someone who loves Black Metal. Oh, and stop being so fucking humourless as well, you miserable bastards. You’re in bands, not fucking hospital.
Sorry, that got away from me a bit there…
The point of that spectacular rant was SUPPOSED to be that Dark Juan was first exposed to Newport, South Wales- based Spider Kitten when he wrote for that other website and Dark Juan had found their far-side-of-the-Melvins idiosyncrasy very much to his taste, being as they welded Hank Williams-esque Country Music to the Doomiest Doomy UltraHyperMegaDoom™. It is with more than my usual enthusiasm, then, that I activate the Platter Of Splatter™ and chuck Spider Kitten’s latest recorded work upon it for an excellent and not at all humorous critical analysis.
The opening song on “A Pound For The Peacebringer” is the title track and it clocks in at a mere sixteen minutes and fifty-five seconds. As far as opening gambits go, this is the musical equivalent of shoving every single chip into the pot in your FIRST poker hand and offering your house, car and hot girlfriend/ boyfriend/ non-binary partner as well. It shows the extreme confidence that Spider Kitten appears to have in their music if they are going to open an album with such a monumental piece. Thankfully it lives up to the hype with the peculiar amalgam of styles (Doom, Stoner, Shoegaze, Sludge, Country, Southern Rock, Pastoral Folk, Blues, Prog, and Psych) that Spider Kitten employ all coming together to give the listener a good old-fashioned lesson in violent shock and awe. Vocalist Chi Lameo channels his inner Michael Gira to spectacular effect, wringing his emotions absolutely dry and then twisting just a bit more for good measure. The heaviness is unquantifiable and the music unstoppable. Thunderous, super-buff big-fuzz riffing gives way to a clean vocal and a loud/ quiet/ FUCKING LOOOOUUUD dynamic that can remove heads from a good half-mile range, minimum. This song doesn’t progress unless you count glacial shift as progress. It is ponderous, slow, staggeringly heavy, inexorable, and incredibly dangerous like an avalanche. It is the musical equivalent of an avalanche. It is inescapable. Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here.
‘Safe To Drown’ starts with cheerful birdsong and pastoral folk guitar. This worries Dark Juan because it means something unspeakable is about to happen. The pastoral folk moves into a Country song. Or Country if it was done by people with psychological trauma. One of my friends once described Country music as “Farm Goth” and I was sold on that description. So, this is a Farm Goth song. I’m joking, of course. It’s actually a decent little tune that offers some light and shade to the album.
‘Bellwether’ is not Country, or Farm Goth if you like, or anything like that, though. It’s heavier than an armoured regiment operated exclusively by Soviet bodybuilders and hammer throwers (and those are just the women’s teams) and your mum. It’s mogadon slow, hyperfuzz nirvana magicked through valve-driven vintage equipment and sent through the ether to crush skulls and powder bones. I still maintain that Spider Kitten as a name is going to give some listeners a sense of false hope – my first thought (when I listened to them for the first time all those years ago) was that I was going to hear some appalling Pop-Punk bouncy crap, or even worse Babymetal-lite or something banal like that. No, instead you get guitar riffs that you do not time in seconds or even minutes – you time them in geological epochs.
‘God’s Song’ is a welcome change of pace from the crushing heaviness though – it sounds like a Mark Lanegan song written by Nick Cave and Chi Lameo’s sneering, confident, bluesy vocal oozes detached amusement, and disdain and whiskey-fuelled bemusement all at the same time. It might actually be the best tune on the album, lyrically speaking, as they are searing and insightful throughout.
The album is closed by ‘Fluid Druid’, which is Swans-esque pathos mixed with sub-Melvins fuzz worship and guitars that bring a new level of meaning to Drone… It really batters the senses like a battle between close-ranged large calibre artillery and the subsequent explosive payloads raining death from above in some kind of blasted city nightmarescape filled with red-hot screaming fragments of shrapnel and the limbs of adults and children littering the ground, where men hunt men and women are hidden because men will hunt them first…
In short, it’s another triumph from these most august Welsh miserablists. It is an album that is thunderous, powerful, mountainous and dangerous. Which is what music should be.
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System has just finished stuffing its internal organs back into the hole that Spider Kitten has blown through its torso, and awards Spider Kitten 10/10 for a Doom/ Drone/ Country meisterwerk.
TRACKLISTING:
01. A Pound For The Peacebringer
02. Safe To Drown
03. Bellwether
04. God’s Song
05. Fluid Druid
LINE-UP:
Chi Lameo – Vocals, guitars, keys
Chris West – Drums, vocals, guitars
Steve-o Jones – Bass, guitars
Gareth Day – Guitars, vocals
LINKS:
Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of Dark Juan and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
