Careful Consideration

This is it. After wasting a large amount of mental energy over the past few weeks and doing a lot of listening, I have come to my final decision. In my opinion, the best album of the last ten years is 'Jupiter' by Cave In. This album is important for many, many reasons. Firstly, it's the way in which it manages to mix perhaps my two favourite sub-genres of rock music, shoegazing and hardcore, almost perfectly. I first saw them live, at the Astoria in 2002, supporting Hundred Reasons and to this day I have still not been that 'blown away' by a previously unknown support band. I literally could not believe what I was hearing. It was everything that I'd ever wanted to do in music myself, and more. 'Jupiter' was the album they were currently touring, so I went out and bought it. I'm not sure how long it remained on constant rotation for, but it was probably a good month or two.

The main reason why this album is so important to me is what it eventually led to. Through this I began to check out similar artists, artists on the same label and every single band listed in the sleeve notes. The label, Hydra Head, is/was home to some of the more avant-garde heavy music around and is run by Aaron Turner, vocalist and guitarist for Isis. Bands thanked in the sleeve notes include contemporaries such as Converge, Coalesce, Garrison, The Dillinger Escape Plan and Botch.

Jupiter's real triumph of course is the music. There's everything from dirty, slow, almost doom-metal (the aptly named 'Big Riff'), 3-minute pop-hardcore ('Brain Candle'), neo-prog epics and acoustic balladry all bound together by a strong sense of melody that runs through this album's very core. It is without a doubt Cave In's finest body of work. Following this, they were picked up by RCA records and went on to gain some moderate success with 2003's 'Antenna' before parting company with them and eventually going on hiatus in 2006. Good news though, they re-appeared this summer with the 'Planets Of Old' EP, released on Hydra Head and have begun touring again.

Take the time to watch this live performance of album highlight 'In The Stream Of Commerce', and do yourself a favour and get hold of this album.

In the next few days, once I've worked everything out I'll put up the rest of the list.