cave in

Record #868: Bloodmoon – Bloodmoon: I (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Usually, when artists announce a collaboration, you can make a pretty educated guess as to what the end result might sound like. Take for instance Volcano Choir, the union of Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and mathy post rockers Collections of Colonies of Bees, who released music that sounds like Bon Iver playing mathy post rock. Or May Our Chambers Are Full by Thou and Emma Ruth Rundle, which found ERR offering her gothic country vocals over Thou’s relentless sludge.

But then you have projects like Bloodmoon, which unites all of Converge with Chelsea Wolfe, her ubiquitous collaborator Ben Chisholm, and Cave In’s Stephen Brodsky. There isn’t much common ground between the chaotic mathcore, gothic doom, and melodic space metal of the three respective projects to predict what it might sound like.

There’s no low-hanging fruit so ripe that it’s practically picking itself off of the vine. Instead, this album is carefully and laboriously worked. It sounds cultivated, not gathered. And, every drop of sweat was worth it.

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Record #858: Cave In – Heavy Pendulum (2022)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Cave In have often been described as chameleons. However, those tree-dwelling lizards can really only change their color, which is a poor analog for the Boston quartet’s sonic shapeshifting abilities. They’re more like some sort of Lovecraftian cephalopod, changing its color, shape, and size at will. From the brutal metalcore of their early records to the soaring space rock of Antenna, Cave In has thrived on reinventing themselves.

But on Heavy Pendulum, they somehow manage to fit every facet of their career into a single—albeit massive—record. They follow all of their seemingly contradictory instincts to their breaking points, creating what might be the most Cave In-y Cave In record of all time.

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2019: A Year In Review

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 2 Comments

As we sit on the cusp of a new year—and a new decade—it’s become customary to look back and quantify all of the music produced into a neat little list of what’s noteworthy.

While these lists are always bound to vary from person to person and between publications, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so much variation as in 2019. This year was an undeniable banner year for music, with excellent release after excellent release piling up relentlessly without ceasing. If you slipped behind, there was no hope of catching up.

As I look back on the year, I keep being surprised by all the stuff I missed—either ubiquitous barn burners like Lizzo or Lana Del Ray’s NFR or artists I love like Solange and Deerhunter. Even among releases I loved and purchased, quantifying all of it into a top ten list proved a much more difficult task than most years.

And so, as much as I stand by this list, I’m fully aware how flawed a ranked top whatever format is for describing just how magnanimous this year’s musical output was.

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2018 Year End Lists

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 2 Comments

At midnight tonight, the earth will continue another circle around our star.

And while it might be a pretty arbitrary marker of time, it’s a great way to group music together to quantify it. And since I am an amateur music critic, I’m obligated to create my own year-end lists.

2018 was a banner year for music—not just because of the relentless onslaught of incredible new albums, but I also saw more shows than ever and discovered a fair amount of music that I missed. And in this article, I’m counting them all down. Continue reading →

Record #542: Cave In – Antenna (2003)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Of all of the chameleonic reinventions across the history of recorded music, few groups were as mercurial as Cave In.

And while Antenna might not be the biggest left turn they’ve ever taken, it’s certainly the furthest end of their creative spectrum, leaning heavier on space rock and alternative than ever before. But there’s still plenty of metal heaviness to give these songs some real heft. Continue reading →

Record #540: Cave In – Jupiter (2000)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

In all of my examinations of the nerdiest aspects of music critique, I have never found a band with a more convoluted creative arc than Cave In.

I was first exposed to the group a few years ago when I picked up White Silence in a lot of records that I bought to flip. It was an angular, abrasive piece of experimental metalcore that I was not into at all. I dismissed them as a band I just wasn’t into, and that was that.

Then a few weeks ago, a friend recommended Antenna, their major label breakthrough that blended alternative metal and space rock to make something that my friend described as “Deftones meets Sunny Day Real Estate.” After hearing the contrast, I delved deep into their discography to try to figure out what exactly happened.

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