With the End, 27, Salt the Earth and Mass St. Murder
The only three certainties in life are death, taxes and a different style for every Cave In album. The scruffy rockers benefited from the fertile Boston hardcore scene and unleashed two late-'90s discs that incorporated thrashing rock and screaming metal. Naturally, the band followed those punishing noise nuggets with 2000's prog-emo opus Jupiter, an album of dark experimentation and quiet swatches of sound that elicited comparisons to both Radiohead and hardcore. Such intricacies led to a deal with RCA and a shift toward a glossier sound on last year's Antenna. Despite the jackhammering catchiness of "Inspire" and "Anchor" and the soaring riff spirals of "Lost in the Air," the album never caught mainstream fire. But that was hardly a concern for the metamorphosis-happy band. Vocalist Stephen Brodsky has called Cave In's newest material "Isis on Prozac," perhaps sounding the death knell for the band's accessibility but nonetheless signaling a solid step toward new frontiers.
