Let’s be clear from the jump: Metanoia doesn’t ask for your attention – it drags you under by the collar of your patched-up denim vest and doesn’t let go until it’s rattled your teeth and rearranged something in your chest cavity. This is a record born from smoke and reverb, but sharpened by lived experience – the sound of a band not just flexing their muscles, but cracking their knuckles with intent.
Crystal Spiders has always sat at an intersection – a confluence of swampy groove, fuzzed-out low-end punishment, and the kind of vocal fire that feels more sermon than song. On Metanoia, they’ve widened that crossroads into a chasm. Brenna Leath’s voice is still the molten core – raw, searing, and impossibly commanding – but what’s changed is the way the band wields atmosphere like a weapon. There’s a cinematic weight here, not in polish (thankfully), but in scope. It’s doom that isn’t content to just doom. It expands, mutates, breathes. There’s psychedelic ritual, proto-metal bite, and yes – plenty of righteous, grooving stoner churn. But it never settles long enough into any one mold to get comfortable.
The production by Mike Dean (of Corrosion of Conformity – and that lineage shows) doesn’t smooth out the edges, but rather amplifies the grime in high fidelity. The riffs sound like they were exhumed from the red clay of North Carolina and then baptized in reverb tanks. The bass isn’t just thick – it clings. Drums tumble and crack like distant thunder rolling off the Piedmont hills. The whole record feels like a ritual performed under low-hanging clouds and buzzing transformers, equal parts sacred and snarling.
There’s something alchemical happening here. Metanoia doesn’t just sound heavy – it feels heavy. Not in the “dude-this-riff-is-heavy” way (though, trust me, it is), but in the metaphysical sense. This is the kind of record you don’t just listen to – you carry it around for a while. You think about it when it’s quiet. You come back to it when the light feels wrong. The title isn’t metaphorical fluff – this is a record about transformation, but the kind that hurts. The kind that scrapes off old skin with broken glass and sandpaper riffs.
If you’re here for hooks, you’ll find them. If you’re here for Sabbath-worship or weed-nodding groove, it’s all accounted for. But Crystal Spiders aren’t just riding the riff – they’re dragging it into new territory. This is the sound of a band who grew up on the desert and the dungeon but now stare into the horizon and dare it to blink first.
Metanoia is a third album in form, but a debut in impact – the kind of record where a band stops referencing their influences and starts sounding like the thing others will reference. It’s spiritual without preaching, poetic without pretense, and heavy without ever feeling bloated.
Put simply: this is what it sounds like when the third eye opens mid-riff, and it’s staring straight through you.
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Released by Ripple Music on May 23rd, 2025
