ALBUM REVIEW: God Don’t Sleep – Spider Kitten
Esoteric South Wales trio SPIDER KITTEN are nothing if not prolific. Now twenty five years into their career, the band is about to birth its thirty sixth (we think) recorded effort, and tenth full-length album, upon the world, following hot on the heels of 2025’s eclectic The Truth Is Caustic To Love. That record saw the band veering through genres across its fourteen tracks, from acoustic Western-inspired Americana to shrieking noise rock and swampy, grinding sludge. It made for an intriguing and strangely cathartic experience, albeit one that jumped around so much that it was sometimes difficult to fully get your ears around.
Almost as a reaction to that, God Don’t Sleep sees the band return to something a little less experimental and a little more coherent. Across its five songs it sees the band more focused on producing a more satisfying whole and if that is the band’s goal with this album, then it has been absolutely achieved. Reminiscent of 2016’s Ark Of Octofelis, God Don’t Sleep sees SPIDER KITTEN at their creative, heavy and psychedelic best.
Best Guess Hotel kicks things off with a bang. Anchored over a lurching 4/6 time signature, vocal and guitar harmonies combine to create a grungey, grimey ALICE IN CHAINS-esque atmosphere that feels like walking through a dated motel after a few too many, stumbling and tripping as you try to find the door. It’s suitably strange and sinister but also follows a relatively straight forward structure that won’t have listeners scratching their heads so much as nodding them. The Calver starts nervously, hushed and crackling vocals creeping through the speakers before the song opens out into a huge, doomy verse, colossal riffs echoing off seemingly cavernous walls. This loud/quiet structure continues throughout to excellent effect, adding a sinister layer to proceedings and the guitar tones here have a pleasingly retro feel to them, like something from a long-lost jam by PETER GREEN’S FLEETWOOD MAC or PINK FLOYD at their most ‘under the influence’. Fast Queen is as close to an all-out stoner rock banger as SPIDER KITTEN have ever recorded and with its opening engine revving and fuzzy distorted riffing it sounds like a companion piece to the FU MANCHU classic Evil Eye. Losers & Fools slows things right back down again, its grunge-fuelled metallic swagger again coming across like some of Seattle’s finest had they all been blasted into space circa 1993.
The title track closes things out and does so over the course of nearly 21 minutes. Needless to say, SPIDER KITTEN haven’t entirely left the experimentation behind but even this absolute monster of a song – in effect another album’s worth of material on its own – is still more focused and energised that a lot of music on their most recent releases. Chi Lameo’s vocals are again given space to shine here and again the harmonies he creates while multi-tracking his vocal parts call back to the beautifully dark and sometimes atonal lines created by Layne Staley and Jerry Cantrell in their heyday. These harmonies sit in counterpoint with the crushing doom riffs that accompany them and despite its sprawling runtime somehow the track never feels like it outstays its welcome. In fact, it immediately demands that you put it back on again to see what you might have missed.
It’s a genuine pleasure to hear SPIDER KITTEN still confounding musical expectations after all these years, even presenting this album as a newly unearthed long-lost 1976 classic created by an alternative-reality version of the band. What makes it even more pleasing is the quality of music on offer here. This is the band’s best release in a long time, if not ever, and marks another amazing entry into the annals of underground sludge overlords APF Records.
Rating: 8/10
God Don’t Sleep is out now via APF Records.
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