DEFENDING CAVE IN’S “SELL OUT” RECORD ANTENNA

I’ve read enough “Cry Now, Cry Later” columns in Decibel to know that if J. Bennett and I ever met we’d be instant besties, or more likely I’d wanna be instant besties and he’d be all “psshhh… get off my nuts, lowly blogger.” Dude’s writing makes me jealous on a regular basis, and he’s got great taste in metal too. His latest pièce de résistance is an entry in The Deciblog‘s “Justify Your Shitty Taste” series, in which DB writers are challenged to defend formerly indefensible and widely loathed albums: today’s mission, Cave In’s only major label child, Antenna.

For the most part I agree with Bennett that Antenna was, in fact, pretty sweet. His main point is that Antenna is basically Jupiter Part 2, so with Jupiter being as universally lauded as it is now, why no love for Antenna? I agree that you’d have to be a nincompoop to not see that Antenna was coming after the stylistic change on Jupiter and the appropriately named stop-gap EP Tides of Tomorrow, and I agree that Antenna has some pretty sweet jams. But the key word is “some;” while a few songs are big winners in the same space-rock vein as those on Jupiter, some of them are completely forgettable resulting in an album that drags on at times. Still, Antenna doesn’t deserve to be the target of such viscous ire. Moshing dude-bros just got extra butt-hurt that the sea change in the band’s sound ushered in with Jupiter was there to stay (which, ironically, ended up not being the case with the band’s post-Antenna output).

Read J. Bennett’s “Justify Your Shitty Taste” column over at Decibel, then get to arguing. Which Cave In album is the best???

-VN