Cave In - Jupiter

When I first read this week’s assignment, a sumptuously warm wave of joy washed over the shore of my sandy soul. Y’see, music and Liverpool Football Club are essentially my first loves, predating the fairer sex by some ten years or more, and so both have influenced who I am today to a quite considerable degree. My beloved Liverpool is one for another day, and so music takes precedent on this occasion.

So, in my giddiness, which albums railroaded through my head as possible subjects to be dissected? My initial thought was to select one of my favourites – Suffocation’s Effigy of the Forgotten or Nile’s magnum opus In Their Darkened Shrines, or maybe And Then You’ll Beg by Canadian maestros Cryptopsy – but then I thought about the impact that they have had on my life and what they have come to mean to me in that context.

The above are all great records resplendent with virtuosity at almost every turn. The impossibly precise bends from the screaming guitar of Karl Sanders that bring the solo in “Unas Slayer of the Gods” to an apocalyptic climax send shivers down my spine each and every time I hear it. As does the off-kilter breakdown in “Liege of Inveracity” – possibly the most pummelling, haemorrhage inducing riff ever committed to a record – and the wonderfully fluid solo to “We Bleed”. But what have they come to mean or what effect have they had on me as a human being other than admiration for the artists that created them?

The truth is that their combined impact is not as reverberant as my eventual choice: Cave In’s epic post-hardcore space odyssey, Jupiter. It’s somewhat of an odd choice, even to me, since I would describe my main musical preference to be death metal but this album invokes emotional memories, eventually coming to represent both love and bitterness, more than any other record I own. This contrast between light and dark is a recurring theme throughout the album with the brilliant light of “In the Stream of Commerce” juxtaposing delightfully with the bleak abyss of “Big Riff”.

“Big Riff” became a symbol of my bile and ire towards her, with Stephen Brodsky’s refrain: “You’re another coat of red in hell” being the manifestation of my feelings at that time. Nowadays, it’s more therapeutic to hear and the intensity has dropped somewhat. This subsidence is evident in the recording itself as the line is initially shouted over a down tuned riff heavy enough to disturb the Earth from it’s orbit before yielding to a cleanly sung reprise amid the backdrop of undistorted calm clarity.

This song attracts the most emotional attention from me because, in addition to the painful memories, it also offers a path forward towards catharsis via the lyric: “On a concrete road to recovery/’Cause I'm knocking over every cone in front of me.” To this day, this lyric is probably the biggest lesson in life that an artist has passed on to me; we as humans will make mistakes, it’s what makes us human rather than divine, but there is always a road back, always future events just waiting to happen that will bring joy and/or redemption. I couldn’t see this at first, but after many years analysing what it was that was so compelling about this one snippet of lyrical wizardry I am no longer blind and the song, nay the album, makes sense.

Musically, the album conjures images of the exploration of the cosmos by an intrepid astronaut with just the complete works of Arthur C. Clarke for company. At times it’s somewhat of a barren spacescape to drift through with eyes wide open in hope of just a solitary ray of light to provide reference of position or direction. This brings to mind the long bus ride to her house on dark, wintry evenings after work. I awaited the beam of her smile as I disembarked; the innocence of a face free from the worries of life made the voyage worthwhile.

Then it was gone. And its departure from my life was swiftly followed by that of Jupiter, until relatively recently that is. I’m older now, and wiser, and my rediscovery of Jupiter allowed me to face up to the inner turmoil that I thought I had banished many years before. Jupiter for me, therefore, marks a distinct change in my life; I’m not just dicking around anymore, taking everything for granted that it will work out just like in the movies and fairy tales. I had my heart ripped from my chest and bludgeoned to a pulp in front of my very eyes, an experience that is as essential to gaining passage to manhood as your first pint of lager or your first knee trembler in an alleyway from a girl that you hope to never have the displeasure of meeting again.

Jupiter presented this in beautifully crafted cold hard facts – none more so than on the aptly named “Requiem” with its melancholic beginnings contrasted with eastern-tinged, soaring guitar lines providing the geodesic between love and heartbreak. Again, Brodsky’s lyrical theme struck chords within me with each line of the verses ending with the phrase “…by yourself” almost as if he wanted to plunge the knife in just that little bit deeper and twist it just that little bit more excruciatingly.

And that is what makes Jupiter so vital to me and who I have become in the subsequent years after the break up. It is a reminder of everything good and everything bad about a relationship. A reminder, never to enter into anything, let alone a relationship, with my eyes wide shut; a lesson learned in the harshest fashion.

When I first bought Jupiter I was a boy.

Now I am a man.