Band:	Spider God
Album:	Possess The Devil
Style:	Melodic black metal
Release date:	November 15, 2024
A review by:	RaduP

01. Cromer Culture
02. Starcrusher
03. To The Furnace
04. Carnivorous Minds
05. Traces Of Infamy
06. The Wolf
07. Faustian Pact
08. Merciless Agenda
09. Casablanca
10. Divine Intervention

After tarnishing black metal's kvltness with pop covers, Spider God set their sights on another of black metal's arch enemies: metalcore!

Spider God existed as a band before Black Renditions, and the stuff they put out then, like the Skugglösa Ljuset EP, is more in line with what one would expect from an underground black metal project, although the band did showcase a penchant for melody even then. But when Black Renditions came out, that was pretty course altering. You're forever the black metal band that did pop covers. Even if that was successful and you showed the surprising common melodic DNA between the two genres, everything you release afterwards will be seen through that lens, and even multiple releases afterwards the question "Where do you even go from there?" feels relevant. Spider God put out four different covers EPs I was concerned that they were writing themselves into a corner.

Spider God did continue to do original material after Black Renditions, keeping a mostly melodic black metal style imbued with that melodic sense they unlocked with the pop covers. The first stumbled a bit, but the second found some proper footing. But there's always a "what will they do next" sense with every record. To reinforce this, Possess The Devil, as reflected even in the cover art, is not just more hyper-melodic-black metal. Well, hyper-melodic it is, but the black metal side of the sound is almost non-existent aside from the shrieky nature of the harsh vocals. What we have instead is plenty of turn-of-the-century Gothenburg metal and metalcore.

The band themselves mention Underøath and Norma Jean as influences for the record, somehow omitting how much this also sounds like In Flames and The Haunted, with everything from the riffing to the choruses to how the melodies flow feeling very indebted to that sound. There's not that much that is explicitly hardcore to warrant the "core" part of the "metalcore" tag, with "Merciless Agenda" being the one song that felt the punkiest. I'm more used to black metal and hardcore gelling over common ground in screamo or sludge metal, so hearing an album using melodic death metal as common ground is quite jarring, so I'm definitely quite baffled that I find a blend of two metal genres more jarring that blending it with radio pop. However the biggest reason I probably find it so jarring is that the vocals being the prime black metal element feel either too monotonous when keeping closer to the black metal, and too disjointed when adapted to the album's sound. It is something that can be overlooked in favor of the band's incredible sense of melody, though this pair of drawbacks/highlights seems to follow Spider God in every release.

Such gimmicky concepts that are also tied to true crime thematic concepts would feel much more tacky in the hands of a band that doesn't possess Spider God penchant for melody. Even if the drawbacks are visible, the highlights are also so undeniable that I bet Spider God could get away with anything. Also I probably need to listen to more Underøath.