Cave In: dark melodies and suspended bridges

More than 45 million vehicles – that’s like three-quarters of Britons getting into a car and lining up – cross the 1.7 mile-long Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco every year. Designed by Joseph B. Strauss, it was built using 1 million tons of concrete and enough steel wire to circle the Earth three times, it opened in 1937.* So, what connection the Ministry of Trivia finds between this ‘modern wonder’, a marvel of civil engineering, and Cave In’s London concert?

Well, Cave In are tonight almost as far from San Francisco as they are from home; although geographically on the US Eastern seaboard, they are musical miles far from the ‘new rock revolution’ because they adore/recall that beloved period of popular music when rocking was heavy (but not as metal as we’ve got to know it) and blues-based. That’s the theory of (their) evolution…

Cave In’s current album, the major label debut, ‘Antenna’, presents sparser, deeper and more stripped sound that is regrouped into a juggernaut onstage. Cave In can drop intense á la Deftones, go progtastic like Tool, hard like Thin Lizzy, jamming like Led Zeppelin, experimental… The Boston-based quartet – formed in Methuen, Massachusetts, in 1995 – seem capable of playing any kind of rock variations.

Stephen Brodsky, vocalist/guitarist, fronts the band solidly albeit unspectacularly. No showmanship of any kind, no gimmicks or visual props, just power rock. And, the reaction at this show is rather mooted, like the students are having an off-day: perhaps it is the only down-day of recovering from the previous weekend and before starting to pre-debauch for the next one? There was a lack of perma- participation – although the guy next to me sang along every word off ‘Antenna’ – while the applause after each track was deafening. What have we had (t)here? Japanese students?

Songs such as ‘Stained Silver’, ‘Inspire’, ‘Lost In The Air’, are ‘growers’, not possessing the insta-catchiness their ardent supporters, Foo Fighters, appear to have in abundance. The band is more impressive and (probably) comfortable when it steps out of the single format and let their fingers fly-the-frets. Thus, no contest that ‘Seafrost’ showed the most promise (in our ears).

Cave In is a group of rogues on a trail of a perfect dark melody.
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* More than 1,000 people have jumped to their deaths from the bridge but this fact has nothing to do with music or Cave In – Chief Minister of Trivia.