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Rating: Premise: I have already seen the Cave In like 5 times, I've been following them fervently since the times of 'Until Your Heart Stops', and this time I would have skipped them as well, if it weren't for the fact that the Pelican were there too—that's why I hounded my friends so much to be there by 9... maybe too early, but it's always better to be at a concert earlier than later, at worst you hang around in the cold and don't care....
Anyway... at the entrance, you spend 12 euros; after paying, I go in and immediately find myself surrounded by people speaking a language different from mine, presumably German or South Tyrolean, who knows, but I try to bum a paper and no one understands me... So I head to the stall where a proud roadie swaps me the new Pelican CD ('The Fire in Our Throat'... by the end of the concert, the available copies were sold out!) for another ten euros, which is really cool, and I had downloaded it... if it was available on vinyl, I'd have taken it, but no vinyls, to my extreme regret. A beer costs 4 euros... damn, it would have been better to buy two more bottles of piss from the Maghreb in the center. Meanwhile, I'm offered a puff of Dutch weed by a couple of conscientious friends, ideal for reminding me that I only have 3 more joints, then finished...
The champions of Chicago's psychedelic sludge-core take the stage at 11, and my eyes light up with a brilliant glow on seeing one of the two guitarists wielding a stunning ash-grey Les Paul, the same model I saw almost a year ago played at 2 miles per hour by Stephen O'malley in Nuremberg when I saw SunO)))... When the sound of his formidable equipment begins its expansion, I am pleased to notice that the place is gradually filling up. The drummer of Pelican is a monster, capable of maintaining broken and extremely slow rhythms simultaneously while doubling the beats with precision and daring, the bass-man is a groove tightrope walker, while the other guitarist, a bit of a blonde short-haired model type, is certainly no less, in fact, his hysterical and violent playing reminds me of the sickest and most explosive Jesus Lizard; they play for about 40 minutes (...and they could have continued for another 3 hours as far as I'm concerned...), elaborating a lot of the new album material... too bad they didn't play "Red Run Amber", my favorite... but they did blast the legendary "Nightendday" at a glorious volume, and I got excited in the front rows with hair flying and joint in mouth!
The Les Paul guitar has a CRUSHING sound, and only towards the end do I find the time to move from that magnetic vibration to give an "ear" to the equally exacerbated and saturated sound from the other one.... finale including violin bow on strings and lots of applause!
The Cave In, on their part, I must admit, are not to be outdone, quite the opposite... they truly amazed me, proving once again to be a must-see band, consistently rich in riffs and stylistic solutions worthy of the stoner-hardcore Olympus: the new CD "Perfect Pitch Black" I don't know well.... I had been made to listen to it before the album's release by the 27 (a Boston group under Hydrahead), when we hosted them to play at the social center in Ravenna last September, they even gave it to me... too bad I lost it a few days later (it was a burned copy), and I must have listened to it twice without remembering a damn thing.... live, the new tracks appear full of power, with Stephen Brodski's usual falsetto voice halfway between delusion and sentience, bassist Caleb screams like a madman throwing himself at the bass as much as he can, and when Ambro (a friend of mine) kindly points out to me that at the drums is the Converge drummer... well... SPECTACLE!!
The passionate music and saturated with effects and psych-post-rock intricacies loads with an oppressive and violent intensity... I hear a guy next to me commenting: "Ahho... they realized they have to stop being fancy and return to the heavy hardcore of old times!" I agree up to a point: the times I had seen them, they weren't exactly that heavy but still very exciting and especially prone to experimentation, which is why I've always appreciated these guys, even as people (I have several photos with me+friends+Cave In+spinei agogo!!), very affable and fun!
However, I must say that now they ROCK MUCH MORE and create some brutal sound walls, where the guitars rage now in ultra-metal riffs, then in cathartic waves of slowness and noise virulence, then in almost-lysergic and dreamy ballads... a magma lasting a good hour, culminating in an encore acclaimed loudly!! Great... too bad I didn't say goodbye to them at the end...
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