Cave In: New Realities, Old Friends
“New reality / Never knew would be / Dawning on me” booms the chorus of the opening track and lead single from CAVE IN’s first full studio record in over a decade. It rings true for the band in many ways, not least in that Heavy Pendulum is, of course, their first full-length album without their powerhouse bassist/vocalist Caleb Scofield following his tragic passing in March 2018. Soon after that, the band released Final Transmission – a polished up set of rehearsal space demos with a title that seemed to indicate something of a conclusion to the progressive post-hardcore legends’ genre-defying career. Turns out they weren’t done however, going on instead to recruit their long-time friend and CONVERGE bassist Nate Newton to help them produce yet another stellar addition to their discography.
For vocalist, guitarist and co-founder Stephen Brodsky, the band’s glorious, 70-minute plus return was born of “just reconnecting with the music of CAVE IN after having to put the wheels back on the band just to raise money for Caleb‘s family. Doing those benefit shows in 2018 sort of changed the meaning of the band for us a little bit. Like any bit of Caleb that we can remember or honour or memorialise in some way I think is just healthy for us, and his fans as well and fans of the band. Everything sort of took on a new meaning as a result of that.”
“It’s nice to have his spirit with us through the whole process of writing,” agrees drummer and fellow co-founder John-Robert ‘JR’ Conners. “And I think we’ve been able to hold onto it. Like Stephen said, it’s a great way to hear him so to speak… his force behind writing music and the way he did it definitely kind of shaped the way we’ve been playing music for years and years, so we kind of can’t help but still have him around.”
Naturally then, Scofield’s presence hangs heavy over many of Heavy Pendulum’s 14 tracks – some more obviously than others. The aforementioned opener New Reality for example features a riff that the bassist wrote over a decade ago, as well as lyrical references to his life and legacy, while eighth track Amaranthine takes its title and lyrics from Scofield himself, specifically from a sort of musical journal given to the band by his wife following his passing. In many ways though, it’s also a record shaped by Scofield‘s absence, with perhaps the most obvious comparison point arising from 2005’s Perfect Pitch Black in that it sees the band drawing on the many facets of what they’ve done before as they assess just what their own ‘new reality’ might look like.
“It’s interesting to compare it to Perfect Pitch Black,” reflects Brodsky. “Because that’s a record that CAVE IN made when we were sort of trying to find ourselves again after this somewhat confusing journey into the world of being on a major label and doing that whole song and dance. So that record has the spirit of a reclamation of ourselves in a way, and sort of showcases more sides of the band creatively that were either dormant or we chose to focus on other things instead. That’s a special record, and I think with Heavy Pendulum there are definitely some parallels there to the creative process, because it’s been such a crazy fucked up four years – not just with Caleb passing away, but everything going on politically, the pandemic, the death of George Floyd and protests…”
With all that to reflect on, Brodsky laughs that it’s no surprise Heavy Pendulum is as long as it is. Their longest work by some distance, both he and Conners are proud to have given listeners something to really dig their teeth into. “For me it was kind of like having that feeling of sitting down with a PINK FLOYD or a ZEPPELIN record,” suggests Conners. “That’s what you did; you didn’t listen to music while you were doing something else, you sat there with headphones on or in front of a radio and just closed your eyes and got into it and tried to immerse yourself in whatever the band you were listening to was trying to do. I struggle with that these days too, being able to give my full attention to something, but I do think it’s something that shouldn’t be lost.”
All this grandeur can feel quite the far cry from CAVE IN’s scrappier roots in metallic hardcore, the shackles of which the band admittedly broke away from over two decades ago now, but, for Brodsky, the influences of their youth remain “very, very present in what CAVE IN does, as far as our approach and song-writing… When I was coming up with a lot of this stuff I didn’t have anything else going on – nobody did! Everybody’s calendar was wiped clean, so for the first time in my adult life as a musician I had no tours, no shows – nothing on the books. I didn’t even know when I was going to see my friends again. That put me in a very sort of youthful state of mind that sort of harkened back to when I just enjoyed being in bands with my friends”
“We would just get together and hang out and practice and make music in our parents’ basements or whatever,” he continues. “Me and JR did that for years before CAVE IN was even a thing, and even when CAVE IN was a thing we were still super young and had to get our friends to drive us to shows and stuff. There’s a very youthful place at least in my mind when it comes to the seeds for everything that was born musically in this new record.”
Of course, one of those old friends is the aforementioned Newton. A long-time collaborator with all of the members of CAVE IN, including Scofield, he was realistically the only man for the job, with Conners describing a largely seamless transition for all involved. “Nate certainly brought a whole lot to the table as far as the writing is concerned. It helped that he was a fresh member of CAVE IN, but he had always been on the side listening to what we were doing and understanding where we were coming from, what we were trying to do, and he had his own opinions on what would make it better if he were to be in the band.”
It’s all this and more that makes Heavy Pendulum a towering triumph in a string of many others for Brodsky, Conners and co. Helped along by another old friend in producer Kurt Ballou, and of course by their fellow founding guitarist Adam McGrath, it stands as a fitting tribute to the legacy of both Scofield and CAVE IN as a whole, while also pushing forwards – as they always have – with renewed urgency and creativity. “Maybe we all sort of rediscovered our fandom for the band itself”, smiles Brodsky, and as he and Conners look to the future with palpable excitement, it’s clear that CAVE IN are ready and waiting for whatever reality they find themselves in next.
Heavy Pendulum is out now via Relapse Records.
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