3 out of 5

Label: Kapow!

Producer: Steve Heritage, Jeremy du Bois

Out-takes, demos, what have you.  It’s telling that a collected pile of scraps from Cavity is a more compelling, fuck-all listen than the majority of hardcore and punk that gets peddled about.  Now sure, I’m bias, because I love cavity.  I love their dredgy slabs of bass and guitar that drip through slow sludge to peel out into terrifying punk riffs, their weird blend of hardcore and experimentalism that somehow comes across as inviting and threatening at the same time.  I can’t say what magic ingredients you have to sprinkle on a band to get everyone on to this exact page, but each track by Cavity reeks of everyone pummeling their respective instruments (vocals included) to their max effort, meanwhile aware of the needed groove as a band, meanwhile aware of not crossing some line of taking themselves too seriously (which is how I sometimes feel about Cave In, say) or losing themselves in noodling, or getting too punked out sloppy with it.  Each and every track does this, even in the rawer form experienced on this collection.  The difference here – where this is a 3 out of 5 – is that it’s still not an album, and that’s what’s made my Cavity experiences special, is that they funnel that same intensity and understanding into the scope of a listening experience, generally, and here you have singles that all rock separately, but hit some repeated beats when mashed together.  Because some of these are sketches of songs, certain guitar and bass lines pop up again and again but under different track names, such that I had to peek to see if I was looking at an outtake of a previous song or something.

Still, as mentioned, an imperfect Cavity album kicks the doogs off of the majority of other stuff.  And if you’re more into instant thrash, this is the band minus (mostly) the ambient build-ups on their albums, so this might actually be a better sampling for your ears.