Spidergawd - Spidergawd IV (2017)

Trondheim, Norway’s Spidergawd remain one of the best and worst kept secrets in Europe’s heavy underground. “Worst” because they do such a terrible job at it themselves, what with constantly touring and putting out new material. That’s no way to keep a secret. “Best” because no matter what they’ve done up to this point in their time together, they still seem underappreciated. Spidergawd IV is their fourth album in four years.

Released by Crispin Glover Records and Stickman Records, it continues a run of nigh-on-unparalleled consistency in songcraft that ran through 2016’s Spidergawd III (review here), 2015’s Spidergawd II (review here) and 2014’s Spidergawd (review here), and even as drummer Kenneth Kapstad (also Motorpsycho), saxophonist Rolf Martin Snustad and guitarist/vocalist Per Borten welcome new bassist Hallvard Gaardløs in place of Bent Sæther (also recording engineer), they weather the change smoothly and push their sound forward, playing toward elements of classic heavy metal in songs like “I am the Night,” “LouCille” and the insistent “What Have You Become,” among others, while maintaining their penchant for Borten leading the way through righteous, unabashedly accessible hooks on opener “Is this Love…?,” the ultra-swaggering “Heaven Comes Tomorrow” and “Ballad of Millionaire (Song for Elina).” As they turn and twist mindfully through this readjusted balance of influences, Spidergawd also hold fast to the underlying progressive sensibility that has always been at root in their songwriting, so that not only do they reimagine arena rock choruses with a more intense edge than ever before, but they do so with the same level of thoughtfulness they’ve brought to everything they’ve done up to this point.

In this, they have become one of the most immediately identifiable acts in underground heavy rock, and their signature is writ large over the eight tracks/41 minutes of Spidergawd IV no matter what pursuits individual pieces undertake, be it the deceptively pop-minded launch the album gets via “Is this Love…?” or the eight-minute semi-psychedelic nod of “What Must Come to Pass” on side B. Spidergawd sound like Spidergawd, and while one can pick out a riff like the gallop of “I am the Night” and say Iron Maiden or “Heaven Comes Tomorrow” and say Dio and/or Motörhead, or “Ballad of a Millionaire (Song for Elina)” and relate it more to the heavy rock side of their approach — think later Queens of the Stone Age, and no, I don’t just say that because the word “millionaire” is in the title — the sonic territory they claim they work to make their own, and though it may seem like they just bang albums out one after they other because on a basic level of timing that’s kind of how it happens, Spidergawd have never failed to offer a work of marked depth and nuance.

Spidergawd IV is no exception to that, whether it’s the forward charge of “LouCille” shifting slightly down from the rush of “Is this Love…?” and “I am the Night” at the outset as the band makes ready to move into “Ballad of a Millionaire (Song for Elina)” or the fluidity within that song itself, of Snustad‘s sax layered smoothly alongside the bass of the midpaced verse set to Kapstad‘s steady march to one of the album’s most melodically engaging hooks. After the crisp execution of the first three cuts and the likes of “What Have You Become” and “Heaven Comes Tomorrow” to follow, “Ballad of a Millionaire (Song for Elina)” is a standout for its looser rhythmic feel, but its structure is no less resilient than anything before or after, and its fade into a wash of noise at the end only adds a layer of hypnosis to foreshadow “What Must Come to Pass.”

If the sides of the vinyl split evenly in terms of having four tracks on each, “What Have You Become” is the leadoff for side B, and it’s certainly up to the task, reviving the thrust of “I am the Night” at an even higher level, Kapstad‘s snare jabbing and punctuating the careening verse groove. At 3:44, it is the shortest inclusion on Spidergawd IV, and arguably the most straightforward in its intent, so it’s fitting that the sax should open languidly to start “What Must Come to Pass” and immediately throw off the listener’s expectation. The intent at conveying a moment of arrival couldn’t be clearer, and “What Must Come to Pass” earns all eight of its minutes in a graceful unfolding process that builds through a structured start and moves outward shortly after its halfway point, Borten delivering the title line (or sort-of-title-line, anyhow) just ahead of a reverb-soaked classic guitar solo that begins the instrumental course the rest of the song will follow. In their willful abandonment of structure — i.e., not going back to the chorus before the end of “What Must Come to Pass” — Spidergawd remain dynamic.

This isn’t the first time they’ve broken their own rules, and the transition between the noise-fadeout ending of “What Must Come to Pass” and the initial crash-in of “Heaven Comes Tomorrow” nonetheless serves the greater purposes of the album overall. The penultimate song is duly raucous and swinging, marked out by the guitar solo in its second half and more choice interplay from the sax and bass amid a push that comes across perhaps as a grownup version of some of their earlier riotousness. This gives way to the ’80s metal riffing — one hears Mötley Crüe‘s “Looks that Kill” as much as anything from Judas Priest — and rougher vocal from Borten on closer “Stranglehold.” While its hook is representative of the quality of their work overall, the finale of Spidergawd IV is less a summary of the album as a whole than it is a reinforcement of and last bit of fun with the metallic side that’s been present all along. They strut out on layered soloing and the central start-stop riff à la Tipton/Downing, and do not linger, in part no doubt because it’s already time to start work on their next full-length.

When they put out Spidergawd III, I wondered how long they could keep up their pace of releases without losing their grip on either songcraft or presentation, and they answered that question with a decisively forward progression in style while also making a significant lineup change, not losing a step in the process, and still touring their collective ass off. Listening to Spidergawd IV, one isn’t so much tempted to imagine what could possibly derail the band at this point as to be thankful that nothing has, and whether or not they turn out Spidergawd V on schedule in the first half of 2018, they’ve added significant intrigue and accomplishment to a catalog that’s known little else with this latest collection.

Track List:
01. Is This Love..?
02. I Am the Night
03. LouCille
04. Ballad of a Millionaire (Song for Elina)
05. What You Have Become
06. The Inevitable
07. Heaven Comes Tomorrow
08. Stranglehold

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