Cave In Bio

Cave In began as a remedy for boring suburban hell in the early springtime of 1995. Jay Frechette (our first vocalist and band co-founder) and I grew up a couple blocks from each other in the not-so-nice part of Methuen, MA. It was in his parents' basement where we first began to write songs as Cave In. This is also the same place where one of Jay's little cousins would drink bleach and sit inside J.R.'s bass drum during practice. There were plenty of attempts at doing bands prior to Cave In, with names like Quinine and System3 (our repertoire included the occasional Snapcase or Threadbare cover song), and it was all in good fun. With myself, Jay, Justin Matthes on bass, Adam McGrath on guitar, and John-Robert Conners on the skins, we put our tiny brains together and tried to sound heavy and also combine everything else we liked about music: bands like Threadbare, Cable, Unwound, Sunny Day Real Estate, Snapcase, Failure, Giants Chair, Groundwork, Chokehold, Garden Variety, etc., etc., and local monsters Converge and Piebald. The band name itself comes from the title of a Codeine song on the "Frigid Stars" LP.

Despite our naivety and high school confusion, we got serious and recorded our first real "demo" that summer on my little cassette 4-track machine. We played almost every show we were offered. Taking 3 car pools full of dilapidated gear and people to Orange, CT and back for one show, opening for a Deadguy no-show at the Living Room in Providence and playing in front of virtually no one except the folks who'd driven us to the show: this was "paying your dues", as they say. So it was a nice break to befriend local bands like Piebald, Converge, Gambit, Splintered, 357 Noise and countless others who would help us along the way. Some of these bands already had amassed a strong following, and we benefited greatly by sharing live bills with them.