Cave In are a 4 piece band from Boston that are near impossible to categorize. What started as a hardcore group – maybe more importantly, a musical outlet for bored suburban teenage friends - morphed into something much larger as it’s members challenged themselves and their audience every step of the way. From the seminal Metalcore album Until Your Heart Stops, to their Space Rock masterpiece Jupiter, the major label released Antenna and beyond, I tried to include a touch of everything. I also did my best to showcase what the band was about rather than to include just the fan favorites or classic songs. Fans may notice I didn’t include any of the really early material – the reason being Cave In didn’t really become the band they are until they settled on the core lineup that took them from 1998 until 2018, when bassist Caleb Scofield sadly passed away. I also did not arrange the songs in chronological order, rather, as with the rest of my Plaguelists, it is meant to just flow nicely.
1. Luminance from Creative Eclipses (1999)
“Luminance” may be the sole proper Cave In song on the experimental Creative Eclipses EP, but it serves as a pivotal moment in the bands history. Linking the heavier sound of their earlier material with their later more-rock oriented output, it’s a perfect example of what makes the band so unique. The combination of drummer JR Connors rolling snare with the spacey guitar sound in the intro section would become a signature of the group, as would the complex riffs and effect-laden guitar tones that follow. “Luminance” also introduces a more confident and commanding clean vocal from Stephen Brodsky, marking the shift from a mostly screamed delivery to a sung approach. On multiple occasions I have seen the band open a show with this song, and it’s the perfect way to launch into a Cave In set.
2. Halo Of Flies from Until Your Heart Stops (1998)
Until Your Heart Stops was the first full-length album from the band, and although I am presenting a song off it here after “Luminance”, it actually came out before. “Halo Of Flies” showcases everything that made the groundbreaking Metalcore album so influential in the years to follow. The roots of everything Cave In would do over the next twenty plus years is contained within these five minutes. Bookended between it’s noisy, technical, scream driven beginning and ending sections is a cosmicized 90s alt-rock bridge. Showing their wide range of influence, the track veers in a more melodic direction accompanied by Brodsky’s not yet fully developed clean singing. But the highlight of the song is when Scofield takes point, playing a sort of lead bass riff, hinting at the talent that he was to become. In a Decibel magazine article shortly after Scofield’s death, guitarist Adam McGrath says, “If you listen to the bridge of that song, you can almost hear the birth of Caleb’s style. It carries through to [the] new record.”
3. Off To Ruin from Perfect Pitch Black (2005)
Following Cave In’s mutual departure from RCA Records came Perfect Pitch Black, an album that showed the band experimenting with heavier songs again. Being a major label, RCA had no interest in putting out less mass-marketable material, particularly when they were already considering Antenna a bust, but in a music industry anomaly, Cave In was actually able to keep the recordings of the songs they were demoing for a follow up record. PPB combines that hard rock that they had developed but adds an edgier harshness to it. The album is full of colossal 70s prog-rock inspired riffs and Connors drumming is superb. Scofield’s playing and bass tone are savage and he also steps into taking a lead-screaming role for the first time on record, displaying a voice that would become iconic in the heavy music scene. On the heavier songs, such as “Off To Ruin,” his vocals alternate with Brodsky’s singing, adding a new element to Cave In’s sound. This is the sound of the band firing on all cylinders.
4. Winter Window from Final Transmission (2019)
Final Transmission was culled from a number of demo sessions the band had done while working on new songs before Scofield’s untimely death. The idea of the record was to concentrate on the heavier and spacier elements of the bands catalogue, rather than continue in the more experimental direction of White Silence. Unfortunately, the album never came to be the way it was perhaps imagined, but with the help of studio extraordinaire Andrew Schneider, who cleaned up and mixed the demos, the surviving members were able to release an album that caught them in the final moments with their friend and bandmate. “Winter Window,” among others, walks the fine line between the two contradictory sounds. The shimmery guitar effect is as present as the rigid riffing. It may not be the finished product they had intended, but it stands as one of the finest in the bands career.
5. Daytrader from God City Demo Session (2001)
This demo session exists in the world of file sharing only, but it’s pretty easy to find. This comes from a period prior to Cave In beginning work on their major label debut, Antenna. It features early versions of some songs that would later appear on that record (“Rubber And Glue”, “Stained Silver” and “Breath Of Water”), but the rest would eventually be relegated to B-Sides and compilations. “Daytrader” is one of those, but I don’t believe the Antenna session recording ever even received an official release of any kind. I like the demo version better anyway. You can hear Brodsky getting tighter in his hooks and delivery here, and the band is fully embracing their alt-rock side, but they never abandoned their weirdness. “Daytrader” is loaded with all kinds of phase shifting and flanging, and yes, a signature JR Connors drum roll in the bridge.
6. Lift Off from Lost In The Air [Single] (2001)
This goes down, in my opinion, as one of the most criminally underappreciated numbers in the Cave In catalogue. The Lost In The Air single featured two songs – the title track that would be reworked and put out on Antenna and “Lift Off,” which just sort of got forgotten about, I guess. Upon its release it was nearly as shocking as “Luminance,” pointing once again in a brand new direction, right after they had blown everyone away with Jupiter. Gone were the sprawling soundscapes of that album, replaced with tighter structures and more defined refrains. “Lift Off” rocks as hard as anything from their Alternative era.
7. Joy Opposites from Antenna (2003)
I once described Antenna as Foo Fighters meets Pink Floyd. It’s not the best comparison but it gets the job done. On this record Cave In fully embraced that alt-rock sound they had been moving towards and put out what might be one of the coolest major label records of that time. Having built a name for themselves underground with constant touring, tremendous live shows, and a super creative output, the majors came calling and Cave In joined the RCA roster. All things considered, they may have not been the best fit in the corporate side of the music business and the whole deal would eventually fall apart. But as fans, we got a great record out of it. The hooks are catchy as hell, and for a supposedly radio-friendly album, it has some balls. The guitars sound huge and the bass tone is incredible. “Joy Opposites” follows a more straightforward quiet verse, loud refrain pattern, but the delay-drenched guitars and infectious chorus make it stand out amongst anything else out there.
8. In The Stream Of Commerce from Jupiter (2000)
So here were are finally touching on Cave In’s Space Rock opus Jupiter. What was a fairly polarizing record upon its release (I didn’t give it a second listen for about 6 months after I first heard – that time it clicked with me) is now considered an all time classic in the underground music world. Cave In had built themselves up playing in the metal and hardcore scene to a group of people who can be rather unforgiving when you abandon those styles. But as Connors details in Brian Peterson’s book Burning Fight, “We just simply wanted to play rock and roll. We weren’t trying to make a statement.” It was a seemingly natural evolution, as a song like “In The Stream Of Commerce” takes a similar approach, at least structurally, as their metal songs. Instead of ripping guitar leads and breakdowns, the song morphs through spaced out verses, building to an all out rock ending. There may be no screams or chugga riffs, but the bones of the material are still there.
9. The Calypso from Tides Of Tomorrow (2002)
If memory serves me correctly, Tides Of Tomorrow came out of delays in the Antenna recording. The deal was done but there may have been an issue with either the studio or the producer that they had booked (I remember something about Chris Cornell quitting Audioslave during the making of their first album and then rejoining, and that having to do with it). So what came out was an eclectic EP of songs perhaps a little too weird to have appeared on their major label debut. “The Calypso” is a nice rock song that follows Scofield’s lead bass once again as a phased-out guitar line swirls its way around the band. At a tribute set in Scofield’s honor, Brodsky would say that the bass player penned the song comparing the bands pending major label situation to an image of a sinking ship.
10. Heartbreaks, Earthquakes from White Silence (2011)
I wanted to include “Heartbreaks, Earthquakes” because it’s such a weird, cool song. White Silence is Cave In’s strangest record. Following the RCA episode and a temporary loss of Connors, the band went on indefinite hiatus, during which time they all worked on a number of other bands. When they reconvened in 2009 for the Planets Of Old EP and to do a full length that would become White Silence, the overall fate of the band seemed to be undetermined. Would they become a full time touring and album-producing unit again, or was this just for the fun of it? White Silence has the feel of the latter. Stylistically it is the biggest departure from anything else that they have ever done, and it features a huge range of sounds from the ultra-heavy “Serpents,” to the serene “Reanimation.” But “Heartbreaks, Earthquakes” is something completely different. Sounding somewhere between Piper era Pink Floyd and The Village Green Kinks, it’s a psychedelic pop song that unfolds into a noisy chaos.
11. Sing My Loves from White Silence (2011)
“Sing My Loves” became a Cave In anthem upon its release. The heavy and spacey elements are both there and it once again features vocal exchanges between Scofield and Brodsky whose completely opposing tones go so well together. The front section builds upon a chuggy riff and odd vocal melodies before it drops out into its cosmic finish. With its unique backing bass riff and atmospheric guitars, the last 4 minutes of the song are some of Cave In’s best, rivaled perhaps only by the closing sections of “New Moon” and “Inflatable Dream.”
12. Big Riff from Live @ Great Scott, Boston, MA 07-19-2009 (2010)
This show from Boston in 2009 was the bands first in about four years, marking the end of their hiatus. I was there and it was an incredible set. The members looked genuinely happy to be playing with each other again and that came through in the music. This is from a limited edition CD that came with early copies of the Planets Of Old CD. I wanted to end on “Big Riff” because that’s really the best way to end a Cave In set. The song was originally from Jupiter but I chose to include this live version because I love how Brodsky and McGrath morphed the bridge sections in the middle which were once noisy, feedback driven breaks, to now mirroring the rhythms of the drums and bass into a super heavy head bang worthy breakdown.
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