Earlier on in the year, I stumbled across a melodic hardcore/punk band from Pennsylvania called Cavities. Their debut EP, 64 Years, really impressed me and I gave it a very positive review. 64 Years still gets its fair share of plays from me, but I’ve been desperately awaiting the moment that Cavities releases more material. My wish finally came true as they just released a two-track EP entitled Within The Wings. The EP opens with my favourite of the two tracks, “Freedom Waits”. “Freedom Waits” comes in with a melodic lead that immediately reminds me of It Prevails. After the intro, Cavities picks things up while still keeping things melodic. The vocals on “Freedom Waits” are particularly strong, and because two of the three members contribute vocally, there is a lot of variety.
The other track on Within The Wings is the title track. The first thing I noticed on “Within The Wings” is that the lyrics are identical to the ones heard on “Freedom Waits”, but reversed. I thought this was a really cool thing, not only because it’s something I hadn’t heard of too many times before, but because the lyrics still make sense. Instrumental-wise, “Within The Wings” is very melodic – like all of Cavities’ material – but compared to “Freedom Waits”, it’s much slower paced. This is also its downfall, though. While it’s still a very solid song, the second half of the song seems to drag on for a long time and nothing all too interesting happens.
Within The Wings is a short EP (clocking in at about eight and a half minutes), but it gives us a nice taste of what Cavities has been working on since releasing 64 Years. 64 Years is nearly twice as long and has a bit more variety, but Within The Wings features the band’s best song to date, “Freedom Waits”. Personally, I prefer quality over quantity, but I still think that both releases are on equal ground. The new material is slightly more polished, but as I previously mentioned, it does drag on at times.
Side-note: Within The Wings and 64 Years are both available on their Bandcamp as “name your price”, but you should definitely support these guys, especially if you like what you hear. They seem like really nice people (they sent me a free copy of 64 Years, some stickers, and a few patches because I wrote a review on their first EP)!
Links: Facebook – Bandcamp
