This was the first Cavity record I heard and it was love at first gutpunch, which makes an objective review rather unlikely. Given the innumerable sludge records I’ve heard since, though, I can safely say that not only does ‘Somewhere Between…’ hold up, it still demolishes most of the competition that’s arisen in the 20+ years since.
Here, Cavity demonstrated exactly how it should be done, blending Sabbath riffs and hardcore attitude while threading it all through with a glass-gargling sense of torment. It’s this latter element that often proves hardest to nail, and the one that sets bands like Cavity, Molehill and Toadliquor apart from others who might have all the vintage kit in the world but lack the lived experience to ensure their music drips with soul-withering misery.
Opening cut ‘Goin’ Ann Arbor’ is a genre masterclass, with its lumbering bass line, cement block riffing and the way feedback pisses through every open space like pain rushing into your system as soon as the meds wear off. It sets the mood (sour) and pace (slow) for the first side of the record, the music deathrolling you into submission while the vocalist attempts to chew through the side of his own face.
The flip was recorded live on the radio, and while it’s infinitely more ragged this makes it perhaps even more thrilling. The feedback has been weaponised and seems capable of slicing through flesh like rusty wire, while the singer’s vocals seem powered by little more than spite and disbelief (check out the disconsolate jabberings that close out ‘Chase’, which sound mid-way between Dystopia and End Of The Century Party…). Leaning on ‘Human Abjection’-era songs there’s a dangerous, wounded quality to the performance, with the drunken stumbles interspersed by moments of brink-of-collapse speed. It’s a fantastically unhinged way to round out the record, conjuring as it does images of miserable humans hurling themselves against a studio wall and leaving behind not just streaks of snot, spit and blood, but also the slow-to-decay echoes of an incredible, white-knuckle performance.