Band:	Spider Kitten
Album:	A Pound For The Peacebringer
Style:	Doom metal, Stoner metal
Release date:	September 2023

01. A Pound For The Peacebringer
02. Safe To Drown
03. Bellwether
04. God's Song [Randy Newman cover]
05. Fluid Druid (Float On)

Stoner metal, perhaps fairly, gets a worse rap than most metal genres for featuring an overabundance of formulaic and repetitive bands. However, there’s still plenty of bands representing the genre that display ingenuity and inspiration, with one notably ingenious group being Wales’ Spider Kitten.

Aside from a brief hiatus in the middle of last decade, Spider Kitten have been going for over 20 years, and they’ve certainly made good use of that time; just look at this discography. With a mixture of full albums, EPs, splits, collaborations, live recordings and spin-off projects, bandleader Chi Lameo has fully explored his musical interests; newcomers to the group may appreciate this recent compilation as a convenient introduction into what Spider Kitten are all about. As to what exactly that is, I would say from my own experiences skimming through this discography while building the band’s profile in the database that the most consistent genres from which the group draw are stoner, doom and sludge, but there’s plenty more beside that.

On new release A Pound For The Peacebringer, this still remains the case; on the album’s three long songs, there is plenty of plodding, lumbering, dense fuzz in the Electric Wizard or Windhand mould. However, there is more to this album. Most obviously, there are the two shorter tracks, both of which are all-acoustic. Spider Kitten have demonstrated an affection for American singer-songwriters, having previously covered Hank Williams, and on this release, there’s a country take on Randy Newman’s “God’s Song”. “Safe To Drown”, while also being grounded in acoustic folk, bears some resemblance to Alice In Chains’ own acoustic endeavours on Sap and Jar Of Flies.

This serves as a convenient segue to discussing what appears to be an overt influence on Spider Kitten: grunge. It’s not exactly hidden, considering they have two EPs containing Nirvana covers, but arguably it’s Alice In Chains whose presence is more keenly felt on A Pound For The Peacebringer. The vocal harmonies that appear frequently across the record are very reminiscent of Layne Staley and Jerry Cantrell’s vocal interplay in the 90s, and these vocals nicely complement both the heavier doom riffs and the quieter instrumental passages.

There aren’t many quieter instrumental passages on “Bellwether”; this 9-minute heavyweight is, aside from the grungy vocals, dominated almost entirely by stoner doom, which fluctuates between groovy/bluesy and crushingly slow. There’s more dynamic range on “Fluid Druid”, which, aptly given the name, fluidly alternates between fuzzy distortion and more stripped-down and atmospheric bass-driven vocal segments for much of its first half, before becoming slower and denser in its latter minutes.

The real crowning glory of this album, however, is the title track, which at 17 minutes runs for almost half the record’s runtime. Yes, it also has its fair share of gnarly doom rendered with imposingly heavy guitar tones, but it’s by far the most varied track here. After the first wave of distortion, the first vocal section of the song both has hints of Alice In Chains and also a Western tinge to the reverberating guitar tones and ringing bells. Later moments of note in this song include an eerie, cacophonic guitar solo, a completely stripped-down blues midsection, and an out-of-nowhere organ solo near the end, but this song as a whole is really creative, and does an awful lot in carrying the charm of this record.

The title track is the clear highlight of A Pound For The Peacebringer, but even without it, the vocals and acoustic detours do enough to elevate this above your dime-a-dozen Electric Wizard ripoff stoner doom album. While I don’t have nearly enough time to do a deep dive into their discography, Spider Kitten seem to have a track record for fresh ideas and variety between records, so if what you hear on A Pound For The Peacebringer takes your fancy, you might find it a rewarding experience to plunge deeper into their back catalogue.