3 out of 5

Label: Hydra Head Records

Produced by: Brian McTernan

I feel absolutely nothing about ‘Creative Eclipses.’  ‘Until Your Heart Stops’ wanted to kill you… and then, y’know, wank off on your corpse for 8 minutes until your were resurrected via the power of metal, at which point the band would claim ignorance to the mess and start yelling again.  ‘Jupiter’ sorta went with the indulgence shtick a bit but was carried into the ether thanks to some solid songwriting and the groove of a band who knew how to work together.  It wasn’t the second coming, exactly, but it was a fair attempt at tapering Brodsky’s pop leanings with the group’s metal roots.  In-between we have the ‘Creative’ EP, which I swear a kid at Tower (whom we shall call ‘douchebag’ (…it’s… it’s not me)) said was the best thing Cave In had ever done – and this was prior to my owning anything besides ‘Hypothermia’ so why not – but to my ears, this is the blandest thing the group has ever recorded.  Opener ‘Luminance’ is nicely amped up, but it’s a straight ahead rocker – none of the diddly-doo soaring attempts of ‘Jupiter,’ and even bereft of the passion that was behind ‘Antennae.’  It’s just, like, a good song, but it could be by anybody.  There’s another rock song – ‘Magnified’ – but that’s a cover, so the fact that it’s another rock, I guess we can say is keeping with the source material.  ‘Burning Down the Billboards’ is solo Brodsky Beatlesey stuff, which always came off a little rough to me (he ain’t the best lyricist but there’s that lil’ poet inside who doesn’t want to have to sing over distortion all the time), and then you have two ‘Heart Stops’-esque instrumentals, or Sonatas.

The whole EP sounds pretty slick – McTernan gives it a surprisingly meaty backbone (I normally find his works reedy), but, as mentioned, it could be by anybody, so I just can’t attach any real feelings to it.  Nothing wrong with it at all, but not an EP with any essential tracks by any means.