Review: Spider Kitten ‘The Truth Is Caustic To Love’
‘Mental illness? Check. Addiction? Check. Despair? Oh yeah, it’s there. They don’t sing about hope. They sing about what happens when it all falls apart.’ Ah, Spider Kitten…
If you have been here before, you’ll know that I have been writing about the constantly shifting entity that is the Newport trio for many, many years. Being one of the privileged few who got to see them live before they stopped playing shows and concentrated on producing prolific amounts of macabre and mercurial music, I count the band as one of the best things I have discovered since writing for The Sleeping Shaman.
Drawing from the band’s love of a truly eclectic musical taste they have encompassed doom, americana, folk, grunge and even gospel elements over a frankly fucking humongous back catalogue.
My first entry to the band was the psychedelic tinged, Norse doom of 2014’s Behold Mountain. Hail Sea. Venerate Sky. Bow Before Tree, they would peak their experimental doom phase with the terrifying and bleak Ark of Octofelis two years later, a record described by frontman Chi Lameo as ‘depressing and harrowing’, which may have reflected the turmoil that birthed the writing and themes of the album.
Since then, the band have morphed in terms of line-up and sonic direction, pulling back from the brink and giving us a varied take on their musical stylings. However, 2023’s marriage with APF Records saw a shift back towards the towering doom with the anvil-heavy A Pound For The Peacebringer. Now they have returned to release their 1,354th album, the acerbic and world weary The Truth Is Too Caustic To Love, an album of fourteen tracks crammed into thirty-seven minutes of rollercoaster madness, that rocks back and forth like a toothless crone on a porch in a horror movie.
Unlike their last album, which ran four minutes longer but featured only five songs, Spider Kitten’s latest journey into the heart of darkness is clipped, with the longest track just topping the six-minute mark. The ideas and themes get thrown at you fast enough to induce whiplash as the trio, led by vocalist Chi Lameo, who also handles guitar, bass and piano, wrestle with the brutally honest, confessional tone of the album.
13 On 6 starts with a buzzing that immediately becomes enveloped in a fuzzy plod with the now standard, mournful Alice In Chains influenced, multi-layered vocals. The echoing wail, like an unhinged ritual, is disturbing with its quasi-religious musings as the music hits like a slow moving tsunami and walls of ringing doom crawl with gruff clarity before collapsing. The band build again from hi-hat and cymbal work framing the off kilter crooning before crashing in again with the line ‘I’ll eat your soul’ like some drug fuelled, despairing nightmare.
Without pause they smash straight into The Dose with a heady melody and more multi-layered vocals. The powerful drumming of Chris West (who also handles additional bass, vocals and guitar) thunders over the growling bass of the returning Rob Davies (bass/guitars). As Spider Kitten careen off into a lop-sided melody, they roar with a chugging NOLA style riff that would not be out of place on an EyeHateGod or Crowbar record.
it is this charm, this refusal to play by convention, even if they could, always makes them an intriguing, cathartic and rewarding listen…
Before the short, sharp, feedback drenched single The Spoiler, there are the delicate strains of the flamenco/American saccharine interlude Sueño, which does little to prepare for its violent whiplash or the pounding brutality of the follow-up Fetishising Unhealthy Objects.
Three Shots returns to the vamping, hazy Western influence that has frequently crept into the music through Lameo’s love of country as well as the sardonic, self-depreciating tone that runs through the album. For all the bleak subject matter, there is a biting humour, black as the night before the dawn, but just a casual read of the accompanying PR announcement for the album reeks of dark comedy, preventing it from becoming a trudge through unadulterated misery.
The grinding Revelation #1 is spooky and awash with the whispering chatter of crazed voices over the plodding bass which grows to a howl with feedback and crashing, jerking rhythms, capped off with a discordant solo. This contrasts with the neo-folk of Woe Betide Me with its sumptuous piano and acoustic leanings that nods its head to the tones of Alice In Chains Unplugged as Lameo pleads to Jesus over the deliciously picked strings.
Revelation #9 takes a lopsided, rolling groove and pummels it into the ground. Punctuated with hoarse screams and lurching riffs that can make the flow of the album feel like the band were literally wrestling with these complex issues, make the moments of sublime breakouts all the more impactful. Febrile And Taciturn being a great example as the deftones-like heavy passages give way to a tender acoustic finish.
The short, back-end combination of Gold Into Shit, Crying Towel and Wretched Evergreen writhe and rattle like the chains of restless ghosts, heavy, quirky and each standing apart from the other due to a standout moment, be it a wandering solo, crushing riff or dissecting lyric, sometimes all three.
Drawing a calmer close to the album, the cowboy lament of Guilty reeks of whiskey-soaked regret over the strummed guitar and sombre drums. Lameo documents mental struggles, concluding with the poignant line of ‘it takes a whole lot of medicine for me to pretend that I’m somebody else’, a lyric as heart breaking and damning as it is drenched with wry wit.
It could be easy to overlook the triumph in the struggles of Spider Kitten, a band who have come to accept who they are and continue to fight the good fight in tackling their demons. On the surface, to the uninitiated, they can be a difficult prospect, like something in the water in Newport has rendered them somehow alien with their skewed approach. But it is this charm, this refusal to play by convention, even if they could, always makes them an intriguing, cathartic and rewarding listen.
Label: APF Records
Band Links: Facebook | Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram
Scribed by: Mark Hunt-Bryden
