Cave In are celebrating the 25th anniversary of their seminal 'Jupiter' album by playing the album in full. That LP really blew my mind when I first heard it 25 years ago. I was very much a hardcore kid at the time but I had a particularly soft spot for discordant metallic hardcore such as Converge, Coalesce, Harvest, Starkweather and Dillinger Escape Plan. I knew of Cave In but hadn't actually heard the first two albums. I still knew that they were in the same vein as those bands from the fanzines I read. When 'Jupiter' was released, I bought it straight away from a distro at a show and they were no longer anything like those bands. It was such an about turn which could have been disappointing but it wasn't. it was brilliant. It showed that hardcore could venture into new territories and still challenge you. It was essentially prog rock mixed with emo with a hefty bottom end and it gained them a whole new legion of fans.
The opening act is France's Toru who play heavy prog with multiple twists and turns. The drummer is wonderfully animated and his drumming has a jazz sensibility which gives the music space to breathe. I'm reminded of an instrumental Opeth in some places. They can be quite experimental too: at one point the drummer hits his cymbals with another cymbal which is a new one on me, and at another point the band uses various odd woodwind instruments and whistles. One funky track has latin/samba style drumming and is great. There is a Cave In feel to much of what they do but equally there is an anarchic Melvins/Oxbow noise rock element too. It's probably too out there for some but I found it really interesting.
Cave In open with a chugging rock guitar before the other instruments gradually join in. It's more like the opening to a Bruce Springsteen concert with the E Street Band jamming along. From this, they launch into the supreme prog rock of 'Jupiter'. It isn't exactly seamless but it hardly matters because it sounds fucking magnificent. The stuttering bass, spacey guitars and Stephen Brodsky's high pitched falsetto vocals on 'In The Stream Of Commerce' are amazing. 'Big Riff' always disappointed me a little because although it has a weighty bottom end and a heavy riff, I always expected more from the title. It sounds pretty monstrous tonight though. 'Brain Candle' is straightforward alt rock which still has enough weird guitar lines to make it challenging and progressive. It is much more driving and powerful live, like everything seems to be tonight. In fact, this is proving to be everything I wanted tonight to be and more. The astral prog of 'Requiem' is amazing and those guitars sound otherworldly, evoking Event Horizon style cosmic horror in the mid-section before the anthemic climax. The spacey instrumental 'Decay Of The Delay' is absolutely crushing. Both Brodsky and fellow guitarist Adam McGrath absolutely rip it up during a white hot cover of Led Zeppelin's version of 'Dazed And Confused'. Nate Newton and John-Robert Connors are a rock solid rhythm section and they provide the base for the guitarists to create their magic. 'Jupiter's final track 'New Moon' is much more sparse before it bursts into life for the climax. Encore 'Blinded By A Blaze' is painted in much darker hues, with doomy undercurrents of Alice In Chains. I met a number of people that I knew from the hardcore scene back in the day, who all still hold Cave In, and this album in particular, dear to their hearts, and what we got tonight was a flawless performance of a beloved record.
Cave In *****
Toru ****
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