Premiere: Spider Kitten ‘God Don’t Sleep’ – New Album Lands This Friday, 2nd October

Ahead of its official release this Friday, 2nd October, through APF Records, today The Shaman is thrilled to host the exclusive full album premiere of God Don’t Sleep. The colossal new studio effort from Newport’s ever-unpredictable heavy outfit Spider Kitten, which serves as an unusual spiritual successor to their 2016 concept record Ark Of Octofelis.

This new five-track outing transports listeners back to an alternate-reality, seamlessly blending apocalyptic doom, ’70s rock swagger, fuzzed out grunge, and the band’s signature vocal harmonies across forty sprawling minutes of dark, immersive storytelling.

Writing in his review of the record published earlier this week, Mark HB described the crushing weight of the title track as feeling like it is ‘slowly turning a vice and crushing you with the gravitational weight of a black hole.’ Whether you choose to lose yourself in the band’s elaborate, period-accurate lore or simply surrender to the relentless heaviness of their riffs, God Don’t Sleep stands as one of the band’s most potent and atmospheric releases to date.

Click play below to stream the album in its entirety before it hits the streets on Friday…

More On Spider Kitten & ‘God Don’t Sleep’

Spider Kitten have never made the same album twice, and God Don’t Sleep (out 2nd October 2026 on APF Records) is no exception. Five tracks, forty minutes, and the heaviest, most psychedelic ground the band have covered since 2016’s Ark Of Octofelis. It’s also, in more ways than one, the most intriguing thing they’ve ever put their name to.

The Band

Spider Kitten started in 2001 at a South Wales art college, when Chi Lameo and a collaborator known only as ‘ptew’ began building dark ambient soundscapes out of guitar drone. It didn’t resemble a metal band yet, more a couple of art students chasing a feeling, and their debut release, _lp, arrived in 2003 as a self-issued CDR. By 2007 the pair had swelled to a four-piece for Ineffable, their first album under that lineup, drum machine and all, but the real ignition came in 2010, when drummer Chris West climbed behind the kit and the songwriting partnership that still drives the band today clicked into place.

What followed was a decade of the band refusing to stay still. Cougar Club (2013) sharpened the doom. 2014 brought Behold Mountain, Hail Sea, Venerate Sky, Bow Before Tree, a trilogy of Viking epics spun out of Chris‘s Danish heritage. Then came Ark Of Octofelis (2016), a nihilistic, acid-drenched prog concept record about a subversive band and the desert that swallows it whole, and still the record most fans point to when asked where Spider Kitten‘s ceiling is.

It very nearly ended there. Chi‘s mental health forced the band into live hiatus straight after Octofelis (their last show was Desertfest Camden in 2016), and for a while Spider Kitten existed only as Kitten Youth, a noise-rock side project Chi ran as catharsis while everything else was on fire. They clawed back with new blood: Steve-o Jones on bass and Gareth Day on guitar helped build 2018’s Concise And Sinister and 2021’s grunge-soaked Major Label Debut, before Chi finished A Pound For The Peacebringer (an album that had consumed him, by his own account, ‘to the point of madness’). By then the band had settled into the trio that plays together now: Chi Lameo, Chris West, and returning original member Rob Davies, back in the fold on bass. APF Records signed them in November 2022, admitting they were simply ‘crazy enough to release it.’

The Truth Is Caustic To Love (2025) followed, drawing the kind of reviews that reach for ‘genre-defying’ and then give up trying to be more specific. As one reviewer put it: ‘Like its namesake, Spider Kitten is a hard band to get into and a hard band to walk away from.’

The Album

God Don’t Sleep pulls the band back toward the heavier, to the more psychedelic end of their sound: it sits closer to A Pound For The Peacebringer and Ark Of Octofelis than the restless, genre-hopping The Truth Is Caustic To Love.

Best Guess Hotel kicks the door in: a full-on puncher of an opener, built on a lurching 6/4 like crossing an uneven hotel lobby floor. Grubby tales of vice and debauchery dwell within. The Calver shows its teeth slowly. A hushed, nervous intro creeps along at its own pace before detonating into huge, Harvey Milk-sized riffs, loud and quiet dynamics stretched out until the quiet part starts to feel like the threat. Fans of Roger Waters’ solo work may find their ears prick up.

Fast Queen opens with an engine turning over and doesn’t let up: Chris West‘s shouted verses riding the riff, harmonies taking over for the chorus, closer to a stoner rock banger than anything Spider Kitten have tried for a while, before coming apart at the end in a wig-out of squealing feedback. Losers & Fools slows everything back down: a psychedelic, stomping slow-burner in the Octofelis mould, thick with harmonies, Chi sharing vocal duties with Rob, to produce something akin to Alice In Chains’ creepier offerings.

And then there’s the title track. God Don’t Sleep is the record’s 20-minute centre of gravity: the huge-riff side of the band sharing space with a guitar solo that’s about as pure David Gilmour as this band will ever get. If you’ve ever wondered how Pink Floyd would sound if they veered into sludge territory, this track may bring you some answers.

God Don’t Sleep, the spiralling new album from Spider Kitten, releases this Friday, 2nd October, through APF Records. Pre-sales are available on the labels webstore, and for digital downloads, head to Bandcamp.

Label: APF Records
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