Clouds
We Are Above You
(HydraHead)
By Ben Richardson
In 2003, Boston metalcore band Cave In were raising eyebrows and horns in the rock world, touring in support of their major-label debut Antenna (RCA) with the Foo Fighters and gracing the stage at the resurrected Lollapalooza.
This success didn’t last, however, and the aftermath of the Foo-tour was marred by label tensions that led to the band leaving RCA. Even after they released a well-received album called Perfect Pitch Black on indie-metal beehive HydraHead in 2005, Cave In saw their momentum collapse, and the bevy of rock critics willing to bestow descriptors like “emo-metal Radiohead” suddenly turned their attention elsewhere. In 2006, the band went on an indefinite hiatus.
While fans of Cave In’s introspective, textured brand of heavy music are right to mourn the band’s demise, it had a hell of a silver lining in the form of a band called Clouds. Formed by Cave In guitarist Adam McGrath, Clouds released the preposterously titled Legendary Demo on HydraHead in 2007, concatenating stoner rock, hardcore, blues, and classic rock into a widely allusive sound that the group itself refers to as “party grunge.”
Their new album, We Are Above You (HydraHead), is similarly laden with a too-clever-by-half title, so it’s lucky the music delivers so relentlessly. The band is at once more creative and more disciplined, eliminating some of the more wanky departures of their debut while retaining the fuzzy, furious goodness.
Shout-along bong-hardcore blasts like “Heisenberg Says” give way to slow-burners like “Slow Day” that swell and churn like Pink Floyd’s most arresting material. The outfit still knows how to kick out a country-punk hoedown by limiting the beat-making to just the snare drum. Although the band is regrettably skipping the SF leg of the upcoming Boris/Torche tour, We Are Above You is a massive cumulonimbus of rock.
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