Heavy Pendulum

I was surprised when a new Cave In album was announced this year. It had felt to me that the last album (from 2019), 'Final Transmission', was going to be the end of the band. I mean, the name suggested it. They had lost bass player Caleb Scofield a year before, and were clerly finding life hard with him gone. Instead, it seems like they found Nate Newton and asked Caleb's family whether they would be ok for the band to carry on... and so when 'Heavy Pendulum' came out earlier this year and I was pretty damn excited for it.

Straight away I was into the front cover art for this record. The space theme continues with this one, even though the name doesn't seem to quite fit.

So I have to say right off the bat that this record has ended my Cave In collecting days. Up to this record, and for the past 25 years or so, I have collected every colour vinyl copy of every Cave In record that was made. But this record made me stop. Why? Well, because the first press consisted of circa 10,000 copies pressed on to 14 different colours of vinyl. But as is the case in the current era of collecting, the 14 different copies were spread across different retailers, with several places getting an 'exclusive' colour for their store. And even if I was stupid enough to consider trying to collect all copies, I would also have to fork out for 10 lots of shipping. So I decided I didn't want to spend hundreds of dollars on this one. Instead I decided that I wanted to own just one copy, and it had to be the clear vinyl version. For every Relapse Records release, clear is the most limited colour (out of 100 copies) and it's the only version that is the only one that you can't actually buy as it is made for friends and family of the label and band. So yeah... mission successful.

I have to say that I have really enjoyed this record this year. I downloaded it before getting the vinyl and I played it a lot through the backend of summer, and this is definitely one of my favourite records of the year. Heck, it may even be THE record of the year. I guess I'll figure that out in the next three weeks or so.