Words by Greg Walker
Out 24/01/2025
Fat Possum Records
Summoning dark bluesy melancholic musings from the murky depths of the Southern Louisiana bayou, over more than three decades Dax Riggs has conjured an eclectic array of styles that fit into his auditory menagerie. New solo album 7 Songs For Spiders is several generations removed from Dax’s Acid Bath sludge metal beginnings, building on that foundation and all manner of musical adventures since with the likes of Agents Of Oblivion, Deadboy And The Elephant Men, and of course his solo releases, to perfect a Southern Gothic Bluesy Rock style all his own.
I’ve missed Dax’s doomy embrace in the 15 years since his last release, how he naturally slithers within a wide scope of styles and moods, between rock and raunch to mournful gloom, exploring the yin-yang between night and day, light and shadows, euphoria and melancholy, effortlessly oozing mood from every track he commits to tape.
Second single Even The Stars Fall opens with the lyric “Got my soul all tangled up in a song”, but it’s not this track that has my core hurting for reasons well outside Dax’s intended message. Lead single Deceiver came at a time late last year when it was revealed that our family had unknowingly and quite narrowly avoided losing someone who is such an integral part of our unit; Deceiver to this day haunts my perspective of that particular place and time. A rustic production suits the despondent tone: it’s coarse, grating, it tears at my soul with the line “I just don’t know where I end and the darkness begins”. Every single line stabs at my heart, welling tears every time I hear it. Riggs’ intention differs from my interpretation of course; he notes Deceiver is:
“[S]ome kind of country and western doom ballad concerning that little light inside each of us – a celebratory turning away from the darkness and hypocrisy of the established gods of old.”
Deceiver is suitably brooding, dominated by a supremely confident swagger, a well-deserved air of conviction.
Sunshine Felt The Darkness Smile toys with the balance of power in the title, a gentle caress subtly building to a tense payoff, another track that I’ve taken my own liberties with the meaning. Riggs is playing with a literal Biblical metaphor, however I’m looking inward and placing it in the same personal wicker basket as previous track Deceiver, the shadowy spectre of our own minds smiling in the face of a potential and seemingly unavoidable victory.
Another piece of decaying fruit in my basket, Blues For You Know Who is a skeletal waltz saturated in distortion, Riggs’ wounded delivery of that first chorus line, the pleading nature of his expression. A showcase of vocal performance, the undulating tails at the end of each melody line is characteristic of Dax’s style throughout, soft soulful front of mix right in your ear to sharp lamenting cry, the piercing vibrato only adding to the teary emotion. Capped with a momentary touch of a desperate falsetto, the intertwining layers at the end ever so slightly out of time with one another momentarily hold my attention while my soul dances with the ghosts of what could have been for us if not for a fortunate twist of fate.
Ain’t That Darkness slowly rises from a single bluesy fuzzy guitar backed by a simple beat, Dax’s breathy croon in your ear carrying you along the swampy fog describing perfectly the depression aptly noted in the title: “Some damn demon thing got me by the tail again. Ain’t that darkness.”. Layered vocal tracks overlap neatly to add to the ethereal mood, the guitars rising so gradually that I don’t realise the crescendo until I’m enveloped in the uncomfortable humid embrace.
Dangerously courting the netherworld in a tantalising romp, Graveyard Soul has the potential to have been an absolute brutish monster of a track, but in a display of wonderful restraint Dax instils a sense of tension that layers of big guitars would’ve diluted. Despite the moderation, Graveyard Soul remains the punchiest track on this all too brief album, and is an enjoyable ending to what has been an emotional 28-minute ride for me.
7 Songs For Spiders sounds like it was recorded in the bowels of a unconsecrated New Orleans cemetery: it’s grimy, it’s sludgy, it’s a morbid dance of reflective introspection from one of heavy music’s true artistes. All at once decidedly unpolished, it’s not what it sounds like that struck me. I enjoy a well-balanced, hearty meal of a production that surrounds me, draws me in, and engulfs me. This is not that. 7 Songs For Spiders penetrates, but more like a crawling under the skin occupation of my raw self. It’s in my heart, my brain, a cathartic release of pent up mood. In a year where we’re expecting stellar releases from Superheist, Blackbraid, S.I.D among other top shelf bands, 7 Songs For Spiders will forever occupy a special place in my vault.
