(written by Islander)
The well-known descriptor “caveman death metal” connotes big dumb knuckle-dragging riffs, big dumb indecipherable grunts, and club-wielding drumwork that also seems primarily designed to break rocks. No pretense, no sophistication, no appeals to our higher faculties, just red meat for the reptile brain.
Sometimes, however, music that attracts that descriptor reminds of the long-running Geico commercials in which cavemen in modern settings become offended by the phrase “It’s so easy a caveman could do it,” because they are actually more sophisticated than their appearances suggest.
Which brings us to Cavernous Maw, a new Minnesota-based project created by guitarist/vocalist Niilo Smith (Sky Island) and drummer Ben Fagerness (Sky Island, Graveslave, Gloryhole Guillotine). Outwardly, they have no pretense — just look at the name of their debut EP (Primitive), the bloody cover art by Misanthropic-Art, their own proud brandishing of the “caveman death metal” label (though they do add “blackened” to that descriptor), and of course the band’s own name.
But their music turns out to be a whole lot more than a good soundtrack for breaking rocks and clubbing people senseless.
To be clear, the core of Primitive‘s music is indeed… primitive. The brutish charging pulse and gruesome gutturals within EP opener “Into the Jaws of Death” makes that plain. But even in that first song you get what we’ve been hinting at — that Cavernous Maw aren’t entirely dedicated to busting up stones and lowering IQs.
The drumming for example, explodes in rapid-fire bursts. The deathly grunts erupt in hair-on-fire screams. The riffing suddenly boils and squeals in displays of exuberant madness. The bass bubbles like magma. And the fretwork is much more variable and nimble than anything our prehistoric ancestors would have been capable of.
Yes, the song eventually gets even more primitive and thuggish than in its opening phase, but it also becomes even faster and more head-spinning too. The fretwork darts and whirls with the speed of birds in flight, and the athleticism and adventurousness of the drumming is equally electrifying.
In fact, after just that one song you may be reconsidering whether it’s fair to slap the “caveman death metal” tag on Primitive and to begin thinking about something like “technical caveman death metal,” as perplexing as that might seem.
But the idea takes further root in the further songs. They tend to move much faster than the lumbering and lurching momentum we imagine of our hulking ancestors, even when the band are just clubbing the hell out of listeners. Cavernous Maw jolt fast and gallop fast, and they thread the songs with viciously swarming tremolo’d riffage that’s clearly the source of the “blackened” appellation (along with the the blast-beat flurries and the berserk screams that trade off with the cavernous grunts and monstrous roars).
“Agrarian Society” might be the EP’s best example of these dichotomies. On the one hand, it might be the EP’s must rock-stupid pound-fest. On the other hand, it includes what might be the EP’s most gloriously insane guitar freakouts and its most startling breakout of paroxysmal violence.
But all the songs have fun playing with these extremes, veering from one to the other and the other. Knuckles do drag, and big rocks will be split, but heads will be spun and nerves will be fired up. There is agony and there is ecstasy, again within the confines of single songs (“Kinsman of Nature” being a prime example of that kind of mood-swing, and it includes some near-sung yelling too).
One final, and very important point: These songs are also very infectious. They get in, they do their work quickly, and they get out. Just as they’ve gotten stuck in a listener’s head, the band move on to another piece of nasty stickiness.
And so, in the case of Cavernous Maw, the “caveman death metal” descriptor seems more like an exercise in self-effacing humility than a completely accurate label. It’s more like a whiz-bang rocket ride, albeit with sudden IQ reversals that bring back the clubbing and the bloody raw meat.
And with that we’ll turn you over to the un-tender ministrations of Primitive (let the YouTube player run and it will take you all the way through the EP):
Cavernous Maw self-recorded Primitive at their practice space, with vocals tracked afterward. For the gear nerds among you, they emulated a bass guitar by splitting the guitar signal into a regular guitar amp as well as a bass amp, with effects to simulate a bass guitar. The EP was then mixed and mastered by Adam Tucker @ Signaturetone Recording.
Primitive is being released today and will soon be available digitally and on hand-numbered CDs (limited to 100 copies), along with shirts, at Bandcamp: