At the time of writing, I am not finding a huge amount of info about Spider God and this release*, indeed it is a web to be unravelled. This is UK based black metal and is described as raw and melodic; I suspect Spider God is the work of one man. A few releases have appeared since 2020, one similar EP and several splits with the likes of Greek act Μνήμα, Belgium’s Altered Heresy and Welsh non-conformist Revenant Marquis. Thankfully unlike the latter this is a damn sight more accessible stuff with a production that is sharp and blistering rather than dull and near impossible to penetrate. I started off listening to debut release Den Inre Borgen / The Interior Castle via the artist’s Bandcamp and was struck by the feral approach and the really intriguing melodical aspects. One song had some motifs that sounded Mandarin to my ears and another that was reminiscent of that old staple Streets Of London.
Here we are a couple of year’s further down the line with a second EP of just under 20 minutes playing time, surfacing via Repose Records. Titles are again in both Swedish and English and this release comprises of 4 main tracks with an intro and outro wrapping around them. After some ominous synth work and intoning we move into the thrashy mania of ‘Eko-guden / Echo God’ and a hellacious scream is unleashed. This is fast and furious, going like the clappers with venomous snarling vocals to match. You can feel the strength of the melody which twists and turns and gets in the head along with some bull in a china-shop high crashes on the cymbals. There is a little bit of an Oriental vibe coming out which adds to the intrigue and makes one wonder more about the composer and why this subtly seems to seep into his music. ‘Jammerdal / Vale Of Tears’ may suggest sorrow but there is absolutely no letting up from the caustic attack and along with the snarly vocals of ‘Formorkande Himmelen / Darkening The Sky’ I’m again pitched to the Far-East with a sound that is reminiscent of the blackened thrash of old Sigh. This really is black metal that is designed to send you a little bit dizzy and a full album of it is likely to have the same impact as the recent Hellripper album and give you a real damn good thrashing from beginning to end. Without the info you really would be hard pushed here to guess country of origin and as ‘Blod och Vatten / Blood And Water’ is bashed out with compulsive groove, this is all the more mysterious.
I have noticed that a very recent Facebook page has been set up and I have a feeling word will spread and more people are going to get ensnared in this particular web. I am most certainly up for hearing more.
*NB: After writing this, the following information was divulged. “The second part of a trilogy of EPs, each one based on a different film from Ingmar Bergman’s ‘Faith Trilogy’. Shadowless Light is based on the second film, Winter Light, which tells the story of a pastor’s loss of faith and how this impacts those around him.”
(7.5/10 Pete Woods)
https://www.facebook.com/spidergodband
Leave a Reply