Creative Eclipses

Looking through Cave In's expansive career, between their two most towering achievements sits the Creative Eclipses EP where you can see everything change. It's been 20 years since the Boston quartet sliced canyons through multiple scenes, starting as a corrosive hardcore band before releasing some of the most unorthodox and exhilarating songs in extreme music on Until Your Heart Stops. And before the aftershocks could die down, Cave In evolved more radically than anyone could have predicted. While members have forged divergent paths with Old Man Gloom, Mutoid Man, Clouds and Zozobra in the years since, Creative Eclipses was the first signal that a band already celebrated for their innovation could effortlessly push beyond anything they'd tried before. Before Jupiter could transform Cave In into rock saviors, there were these five tracks. Opener "Luminance" is an ascendant, shimmering hymn that bruises the troposphere. The cover of Failure's "Magnified," is taken over with such fervor it feels like something the band hatched themselves, and the acoustic "Burning Down the Billboards" is both a revolutionary and apocalyptic anthem. The two "Sonatas," both ambient tracks, can wholly stand on their own as fascinating immersions into noise. Creative Eclipses is much more than a bridge between the two worlds Cave In has inhabited; it's a captivating example of the sonic rewards that follow the band every time they've chosen to obliterate expectations.