Cave In – “Blinded By A Blaze”

Next month, veteran Boston big-riff wanderers Cave In will return with their new album Heavy Pendulum. It’ll be Cave In’s first album without founding bassist Caleb Scofield, who died in a car crash in 2018. Converge/Doomriders/Old Man Gloom member Nate Newton has joined Cave In on bass, and Newton’s Converge bandmate Kurt Ballou has produced the new LP. Cave In have already shared the heavy-as-hell album opener “New Reality,” and now they’ve also shared a very different song.

Cave In have covered a whole lot of stylistic ground over the decades, so it’s not exactly a surprise that new single “Blinded By A Blaze” doesn’t sound much like “New Reality,” but it’s still pretty striking to hear what this band can do. “Blinded By A Blaze” stretches out for nearly eight minutes, and it rocks hard and slow. On this track, Cave In lurch into a seasick dirge-metal groove that reminds me of mid-period Mastodon, or maybe even prime Alice In Chains. It’s got Stephen Brodsky howling over guttural riffage and playing out some serious inter-dimensional guitar shredding.

In a press release, Brodsky says:

I had the idea for “Blinded By A Blaze” during the Final Transmission days, but it really came to life for Heavy Pendulum. There were 5 or 6 songs in the initial batch of demos that I sent to the band at the beginning of the writing process, but “Blinded” was the one that created a call to action — it’s basically what sold JR, Adam & Nate on writing a new Cave In album. Lyrically, it’s a sonic photograph of a strange magical moment that I had while driving along the Pacific Coast Highway during the golden hour, and the feeling of looking back on it years later — something everyone should try to experience at least once in their lifetime.

Check out the “Blinded By A Blaze” video below.

Heavy Pendulum is out 5/20 on Relapse.