Cave In
Antenna

How do you write a review on a record that inspires nothing? When there is nothing there, do you merely write nothing? It should inspire anger, for I used to love Cave In so. The buzz that surrounded them in their youth is over. They finished it themselves. The sheer, unreasonable catharsis and fleeting doom-inspiring thunders of their first two albums has been replaced now with two more albums of lower tempos, increased structures and melody-infused bustles of woe.

How I used to fear their passion as it seeped from my stereo as a thorny weed might from the undergrowth of an enchanted gloom-filled forest. Now I am inspired only by their insipid colourless wane, floating past like a different smell - different, but not unpleasant. This has been a steady transition, clearly visible through the records in a timeline devoid of treachery. Maybe at their finest during the epic ‘Jupiter’, which mixed their paths absolutely, Cave In have wandered down the path which directed them in the utter opposite of their former channel.

I know, however, that this is where they are destined to stay. This is their maturity. Or is it their mediocrity? Either way, I could see it coming and they have slipped into their place with the ease of men that want to be where they are, and are where they want to be.

Am I meant to grow with them? I cannot. It is not my natural course, alas, and so I will stay here. There are other contenders for the throne that they vacated so leisurely. I fear, though, that they too lie in the past. In my wrath-fuelled life of purgatory I am still happy. Maybe less so with the new Cave In.