Cave In — Antenna

From Hydrahead to RCA, Cave In signed with a major label for their latest release Antenna. And you can hear it. While the band was still experimenting with songwriting and space rock sounds on Jupiter, Antenna is a solid pop rock album with some very small hints of their past.

It's not that Stephen Brodsky and co totally went pop music, but Antenna doesn't have the same experimental feeling as Jupiter. The band was doing interesting things on this record and I was kinda hoping they would progress their sound into something bigger. But instead we get an album full of slick produced pop rock songs. With the exception of the excellent Seafrost, which does remind me of their Jupiterian vibe from three years ago.

Now this all seems pretty negative, but Antenna is a solid pop rock release. Stained Silver, Inspire and their first album single Anchor are all pretty good. With Beautiful Son Cave In tried to write a ballad and I think they succeeded. Penny Racer is a very smart basic rock song. And they tweaked 2001 single Lost In The Air a bit, but in the end this song is still as strong as before.

But overall the album does lack something. The joy of experimentation seems lost, and not all the songs are good enough. In the end I have a hard time to fully enjoy it all. I guess this is because everything is so safe, the band never tried to step outside of the borders. The production is safe, the songwriting is safe, even the artwork is safe. All of this makes Antenna nothing more than a decent album without any high peaks.

There is also a limited edition out with a bonus DVD. The DVD is pretty cool to own if you're a Cave In fan since it features a couple of enjoyable videos.