My first interaction with Spider God was a split with Μνήμα from 2021, where both bands expressed similar kind of filth in a few tracks and had me excited about another uprising quality raw black metal band. You can imagine my reaction coming across Black Renditions a year later, however I quickly moved on with a big question mark on how it was the same band that produced the two. Spider God proved hard working and release their actual debut full length album Fly in the Trap, which still remains unconventional if not polarizing for a black metal record. With a strangely eerie artwork, the record deals with the famous story of the death of Elisa Lam and includes quite interesting, ghost musicians like Rope Sect, Revenant Marquis and A Forest of Stars. Employing heavy doses of melody, most of the tracks abuse tremolo picking in a meaningful way and often manage guitar lines under a lot of brightness, contradicting the usually soul crushing atmospheres found in black metal. On the contrary, Fly in the Trap is borderline uplifting to listen to (check out the chorus of "Labyrinth of Hallways" for example) and doesn't really have the nuances of the genre Spider God are actually playing, yet the musicianship is skilled enough to construct wonderful compositions with nice riff transitions all throughout the album. I found the vocals a little bit repetitive at times, a few titles questionable (e.g. "Hiroshima Mon Amour" or "A Thousand Lonely Spiders") but tracks like the opening "The Fifty Second Murderer" or "Flies in the Trap" have their moments. The unclear direction of "The Hermit" places is clearly as the album's weakest point, and the closing track "Invisible Light" features an introduction straight out of a Running Wild record, and that's how much far away from black metal Fly in the Trap really is. Spider God have the potential to provoke and impress, yet this doesn't translate to the work's essence actually being groundbreaking. By no means a dull listen though. [3/5 - Good]
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