DB HOF NO. 29
The making of Cave In’s “Until Your Heart Stops”
released: 1998
label: Hydra Head
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Cave In have had many musical identities since their inception in Methuen, MA, in 1995, but the one that first established them as underground heroes was the dizzying, face-ripping metal blowout now known the world over as Until Your Heart Stops. After releasing a steady stream of 7-inches (many songs from which were collected on Beyond Hypothermia), by early 1998 Cave In were in a state of flux. Mere months before recording their first proper full-length, the band’s core trio of guitarist Steve Brodsky, drummer J.R. Conners and guitarist Adam McGrath brought in former Strike 3 vocalist Caleb Scofield on bass, kicked vocalist Dave Scrod to the curb, and decided that Brodsky would take over at the mic.
Laid to tape at the first incarnation of Converge guitarist Kurt Ballou’s God City studio (then in Allston, MA), the result was and continues to be awe-inspiring. The vertiginous riffery, delirious time changes and mercurial atmospherics of Until Your Heart Stops would quickly become benchmarks for what was then known as “metallic hardcore”—no easy feat in a circuit that was lorded over by the likes of highly-skilled sonic acrobats like Coalesce, the Dillinger Escape Plan and Converge (whom Brodsky was also playing bass for at the time). Incredibly, all four members of Cave In were just 19 years old when the album was recorded. Even more shocking: Within two-and-a-half years, the band would excise Until Your Heart Stops material from their sets altogether.
In what might still be one of the most dramatic about-faces in music history, Cave In turned their backs on metal and followed up Until Your Heart Stops with 2000’s Jupiter, a mind-blowing space-rock opus that eventually landed them on a major label and prompted yet another chameleonic musical shift. With the benefit of nearly 10 years of hindsight since its release, the members of Cave In agreed to give Decibel the inside story behind this month’s Hall of Fame inductee…
—J. Bennett
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