ALBUM REVIEW: A Pound For The Peacebringer – Spider Kitten
When a band’s bio includes the words “stupidly prolific”, you can bet your bottom dollar that their back catalogue is an unhinged manifesto of their history and ethos. For Welsh doom-slash-sludge-slash-psych-slash-blues-slash-country titans SPIDER KITTEN, that ‘prolific’ tag is backed up by 31 releases across just 22 years. That’s 12 EPs, three live albums, a handful of demos, splits and singles and now an eleventh full-length studio album with the release of their APF Records debut, A Pound For The Peacebringer.
While it’s only been three years since their last release – their 2020 EP Acidgoatweedwitchbongspacewizardwhore – this is an album that has been written across a staggering seven years. Mind you, delving into the pursuit of peace through therapy, drugs, altruism, political movements, religion, and – ultimately – achieving peace through death, is not the kind of thing you can do right in a rush. The care and attention that has been given to this record can be heard just as clearly as the mountain crushing riffs, funerary bells and bluegrass acoustics that furnish these five tracks.
Opening with the epic 16-minute title track is a stroke of genius and the song stands to be their magnum opus. The decrepit fairground opening and neck-snapping turn into doom riffage in those opening minutes is the perfect introduction for newcomers and the ideal open arms for veterans of SPIDER KITTEN fandom. Vocalist and guitarist Chi Lameo is magnetic in his delivery, be it in his air-light harmonies or his gritty roars, all underpinned by his and Gareth Day’s tombstoner guitar lines, Chris West’s monolithic drums and Steve Jones’ unnerving bass.
As the final droning notes ring out on that first track, the album takes a turn into Safe To Drown which is much less MELVINS and more MUMFORD & SONS. Over the years SPIDER KITTEN have proven that they have the chops to wonderfully perform these lilting and emotionally charged country-style tunes. The layered vocals and finger-picked melody that hypnotically loops are accompanied only by birdsong to create a stunning refuge from the gnarled cliff face of its predecessor.
Before long though we are back into the murk and the mire with Bellwether. The clean vocals remain, but the guitars are so downtuned that it sounds as if the strings are barely clinging to the instrument. With a healthy dose of feedback and sparse cymbal crashes littered throughout, it’s a fuzzy doom 101 that perfectly displays everything right about the genre in 2023.
Even after all these years and releases, SPIDER KITTEN know how to surprise and delight, and this time it’s in the form of RANDY NEWMAN‘s stirring 1972 track God’s Song, but with a far darker air. With steadily building guitars and bass, along with haunting strings, lines like “I take from you your children and you say how blessed are we / You all must be crazy to put your faith in me” sound even more sinister and scathing than ever before.
On paper, A Pound For The Peacebringer – and indeed SPIDER KITTEN – should be an absolute mess, but that couldn’t be any farther from the truth. Lameo and West have perfectly tamed such disparate influences and directions into a peerless and mesmeric beast that has attained new heights on this album. A staggering piece of work that needs to be heard to be believed.
Rating: 9/10
A Pound For The Peacebringer is set for release on September 1st via APF Records.
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