If you can’t figure out why you awoke this morning with a persistent boner (like me) or a tingly bottom (uh also like me), let me tell you it probably is related to Hydra Head’s announcement that tomorrow brings the premiere of a new Cave In jam! Welcome to Horny City. Population: you.

But there’s big fun today too! So that we have a use for our various states of arousal, MetalSucks is proud to unveil Hydra Head’s killer new free sampler of recent, unreleased, and upcoming jamz by the likes of Oxbow, Neurosis, Discordance Axis, and Clouds. This is rare and tasty stuff, like the hard-to-find Cave In cover of “N.I.B.” and an exclusive Austerity Program remix of a Pyramids jam. Get it here.

–ADF

As excited as I inevitably get every time a headline involving any member of Cave In rolls through my RSS reader, if I’m being honest I haven’t been able to get that into any of the many non-Cave In projects released by members of Cave In. Everyone seems to love Doomriders, and I certainly like ‘em just fine… but the truth is they seem to fall just a little short of what they could and should be in theory. Ditto for Zozobra, who are probably my favorite associated non-Cave In band.

This holds especially true for all of Stephen Brodsky’s many side projects, bands and solo releases. Just can’t feel ‘em. I’d all but stopped paying attention until a headline on Heavy Blog is Heavy about new Stephen Brodsky solo material caught my eye, and I let curiosity get the best of me. And you know what? I’m glad I did, because this is pretty solid stuff (posted after the jump, natch).

Click to read more…

The general consensus around the palatial MetalSucks Mansion is that the Cave In reunion is fucking awesome. With the members now focused on the main project, it stands to reason that the side-projects that emerged in the band’s wake would lie dormant. While that’s not necessarily a bad thing (the Stove Bredsky disc was fucking awful), I’m pretty devastated to hear that Clouds will essentially call it a day after one last show at the end of the month.

Click to read more…

In the “everyone’s doing it, so why won’t they?” department, Cave In bassist Caleb Scofield took a shot at his ex (or “on hiatus,” as it were) bandmates and ever-so-subtlely revealed his desire to reform the band. The interview, published on Exclaim.ca was actually about his current project Zozobra — whose thundering low-end stoner metal album Bird of Prey dropped a couple of months back (listen to “In Jetstreams” and The Blessing” from their prior album Harmonic Tremors). But the subject matter quickly turned to Cave In:

Where do you stand with Cave In? Any chance of a reunion, since everyone is doing it?
If Cave In were to play live again I’m not sure it would be a reunion. I think it would be more of a return from an extended hiatus. If it did happen I know for a fact we would have at least three new songs to play.

Obviously Zozobra is the heaviest of the post-Cave In bands. What do you think of the quality of their output, especially the new stuff?
I would normally take this opportunity to make a sarcastic joke about those guys but I won’t. I have to be honest and say that both Clouds and Steve [Brodsky] have just put out some of the worst shit I think I’ve heard in a long time. I wish those guys would stop fucking around with that nerdy fucking stoner party rock, 16-bit-sounding bullshit and just get Cave In back together.

Click to read more…

Seminal Boston band Cave In have an intruiging history, one that took them from sweaty basement DYI hardcore shows to spaced-out progressive mettalirock to major-label bidding war and then all the way back, all within the span of a few short years. No heavy band from the Northeastern US seems to be as widely loved and respected yet criminally overlooked as Cave In.

Cave In started out playing a blistering, dense hybrid of hardcore and metal and morphed into progged-out, cerebral space-rock seemingly overnight. The band’s early sound filtered Metallica and Slayer riffs through aggro-calculus-core chugga-chugga akin to Converge and Dillinger Escape Plan, two bands whose histories are closely intertwined with Cave In. But what made the band so interesting was the way they grew over time to weave art-metal experimentation, melody and psychedelia into their otherwise brutal, mind-bending assault. The result was a truly progressive, artistic, brutal and most importantly one-of-a-kind sound that was unmatched during the band’s run and remains astonishing and relevant to this day.

Click to read more…