Spider Kitten roams in familiar territory to those who hunt
the doom laden swamps of psychedelia. I myself dig into this mud with pleasure
on a regular basis. I first stumbled upon the feline early on in my bandcamp
saga, and actually, if memory serves me right, Cougar Club was one of my first
purchases on bandcamp in which I wrote a description down and actually one of
the first times I publicly published a music review of any sorts on the
internet. This spurred a downward spiral of addiction and continues to this day
on the whim that I come across a worthy candidate to put forth the effort of
endorsement.
Spider Kitten’s latest effort, “Behold Mountain.
Hail Sea. Venerate Sky. Bow Before Tree” came
to me without warning as I hadn’t been keeping a close eye on the band,
which features ex-members of Taint, Acrimony, Iron Monkey, Blackeyeriot,
Sigiriya, and Crippled Black Phoenix.
The album title is a bit wordy, but fitting, as it basically
conceptualizes the album within the 4 fragments, as one can imagine.
The new ‘mini-album’ renews the subscription that Cougar
Club began with a dark and melodic twist on doom metal. To me it captures a
vibe similar to the legendary Jerry Cantrell’s solo album “Degradation Trip”,
only deeper into the bogs on permanent vacation. Prelude to an upcoming full
length due out in 2015, Behold
Mountain instills a
gigantic sense of anticipation as its 3-songs serve up 28 minutes of foreplay
hardening the muscles to the brink of explosion.
The album starts off as a demented display of sludge-soaked
doom metal. Slathering the soul with an insatiable scent of psychotic ecstasy,
Lindisfarena pummels the senses with tribal drums, harmonically destructive
vocal chops, and riffs upon riffs galore.
Bearded Axe follows suit, with a reverberated salute to the
patrons of prolific doom. Spooky melodies engulf the throbbing bass line ending
with a classical norskish hymn.
A stoned crow’s symphony acoustically introduces Gore Swan
which more than doubles the albums duration closing the journey out in style. Set to
smoothly stroking satanic strings the cello creeps over the mystic landscape
erupting into a bludgeoning pit of disparagement. Converging full circle, Gore
Swan levels the battle field with a terminating riff of impending doom. The
future is left up for the taking. The anticipation for what comes next to this
land of filth is beyond enthralling. I for one am putting the apparent full
length recording in the works at the top of my 2015 list of releases of note
not only based on this 3-song masterpiece, but hinged upon the copious amounts
of early material available on their bandcamp as well. Spider Kitten is
definitely an under talked about band in today’s market. Keep your ears open and grab this 28 minute
epic teaser out on October 27th via Undergroove Records. Superb!!!
-The Huntsman
http://spiderkitten.bandcamp.com/
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