Spyder Baby - Let Us Prey Prophecy Records - 2008     Detroit native Stevie Banch may own a 17-arce Victorian farmhouse in the countryside, but this tractor-riding, former cemetery worker is ready to make everyday Halloween. Once a high school reject who played piano and collected vinyl records, Banch is now the ringmaster behind the band Spyder Baby. Don’t let the juvenile name fool you because this baby refuses to be put in a corner. Spyder Baby is a hellish circus led by blood curdling screams, haunting lyrical hisses, hallucinating guitars with ecstasy-fueled electronica, along with brain-pounding drumming playing at chainsaw speed. With his pasty, powder-white skin, waist-length crow-black dreads, and purple bruised lips, this heavily tattooed musician of the night is more than every goth girl’s dream date.     Spyder Baby, whom began in 2003, aren’t amateurs in the music industry. When their demo Bugs Crawl In was released in 2004, Ministry front man and Industrial godfather Al Jourgensen was intrigued enough to have Banch help write songs in The Revolting Cocks‘ Cocked and Loaded in 2006. It wasn’t until earlier this year when, thanks to Prophecy Records, Spyder Baby released their spooky rock album Let Us Prey. “Days Go On” exemplifies the musical talent, nonstop energy and I’ll scare the crap outta you attitude that sets Spyder Baby apart from every melancholic Robert Smith wannabe. The track is filled with distorted electronic synthesizers, loud, nerve-shattering guitars by Banch playing against Dave Borovoy’s aggressive drumming. Banch sneers and shrieks, but it’s in “Bitter” where the band really heats things up.     If you’re prone to seizures, get ready to die. Spyder Baby’s “Bitter” speeds up to a point where you’ll have some cracked ribs after jumping into a mosh pit. The band charges with brutal, body-slamming beats that’ll transform any concert-going virgin into a raging, head-banging exhibitionist. “We All Fall Down” slows down in melody, but Banch is more forceful as he plays with the Black Plague-inspired nursery rhyme, “Ashes to ashes, we all fall down!” His most morbid, yet truthful lyrics about life’s realities in his world of critters are “You can’t live and not die.” “The Worms” sounds like a lost Marilyn Manson track, a marching tune fit for a grand Victorian funeral. Slow indeed, but the images illustrated in Banch’s lyrics are filled with eager maggots slithering in and out of a decaying corpse. Although “Lips of Red” is an ‘80s New Wave track eerily similar to New Order’s “Blue Monday,” Banch’s voice is more screeching and not enough vocal strength. Despite not being able to sing a song about pouty, blood-red smackers, Spyder Baby doesn’t lose determination to entertain.     Just because the ‘90s are over, doesn’t mean that Industrial music can’t have a comeback, and with the help of Spyder Baby’s “Let Us Prey,” there’s still hope. Forget about Marilyn Manson returning as an Anti-Christ superstar or Trent Reznor reaching closer to God. -Stephanie Nolasco

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Published on: 2008-05-06 (2525 reads)