Live Review: Cave In - Club Academy, Manchester
12th September 2025
Support: Toru
Words: Dan Barnes
Photos: Rich Price
Looking back at the last time I covered these Boston legends it was in this very basement setting, back in the Autumn of 2022, when the spectre of the lurgy still haunted us ever-so, and like a groundhog, we were tentatively sniffing the air to ensure the world was safe to emerge.
That night, Cave In were all about their relatively recent released, Heavy Pendulum album, dominating the set. Tonight, it’s something different as the band arrive in Manchester in a nostalgic mood, and ready to take us back to the uncomplicated days of the turn of the millennium, when the abject fear of the Y2K bug had been assuaged, and the band were all about the sophomore record, Jupiter.
But first, it’s the turn of French experimentalists, Toru, to bamboozle and bemuse the Club Academy with their arty post rock noise. Blending all manner of musical influences, from drone to jazz, the three-piece build monument through slow, dense passages, dissonant rhythms and the use of unconventional instrumentation. It’s wildly hypnotic at times, a peek into the band’s creative muses as every track feels like a jam, based on the kernel of an idea.
It must be remembered that the release of Jupiter in 2000 was a huge sea-change for Cave In, whose debut, Until Your Heart Stops in 1998, was a much more straightforwardly hardcore-based record. There were clues as to a possible future direction the band might take, but it’s generally a damn-good example of its genre.
So, no-one really expected the band to follow it up with the sort of wide-ranging banquet of an album like Jupiter a mere two-years later, an album that should be lauded as one of the period’s most important records; up there with White Pony, Mer de Noms and Rated R.
That seventy-five percent of the personnel who worked on the album are here tonight is testimony to Cave In’s commitment; Caleb Scofield’s untimely passing in 2018 led to the recruitment of Nate Newton covering the bass duties.
Which I think makes a very real difference to the performance. Here is a band whose DNA has been shaped by the legacy of Jupiter, who have been with it since it’s conception and still nurture it to this day.
The title track oozes with eastern flavours and the driving rhythms of Helmet and Unsane, the big bottom end sends sonic waves through the Academy’s foundations; In the Stream of Commerce introduces some progressive elements, close to Opeth, while still keeping the middle eastern vibes.
Big Riff does exactly what it says on the tin, Brain Candle is light and jangly, maybe even a little poppy perhaps, driven by the bassline it cannot but help cede itself to screeching guitars by the climax. Instrumental Delay the Decay is a meditation on a sweeping riff, where the repetition and reinterpretation take the listener on a journey all of its own.
Cave In play Jupiter (almost) by the track listing, so the above three songs are interspersed by the band doing what they do best: playing to the emotions of their audience.
Immediately after Big Riff comes a mesmerising rendition of Innuendo and Out the Other which, apart from its Dad Joke cringy title, is one of Cave In’s most engrossing tunes. Alternate and emotional, it holds the audience in the palm of its hand. The epic Requiem follows Brain Candle and is a wholly different prospect. Wrought and attracting the label “emo-metal Radiohead” upon release, it’s a complex and captivating experience that seems to seep into your soul. The spacey and psychedelic moments at odds with its more ferocious passages, where the band appear to go medieval on their instruments.
Zeppelin’s Dazed and Confused is inserted before New Moon, leaving the album closer to bring the curtain down on this part of the show. The single encore of Heavy Pendulum’s Blinded by a Blaze brings the set up to date with Cave In’s discography and reminds Manchester – should Manchester need reminding – that the band aren’t here to milk the nostalgia cow.
Criminally under-rated and confusingly ignored, Cave In tonight proved yet again they are, were and will continue to be a force to be reckoned with.
Photo Credits: Rich Price Photography
