Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10
Any venture into the unknown should be celebrated with the loud and cheerfully fulfilling; it is the fear that keeps us in our own personal caves, eyes used to the meagre light afforded us by holding back, not willing to see what lays beyond the crevice and the crack in the rocks. The fear may hold us back but humanity always perseveres and in some cases, the first step out into the blinking light is worth the sound of the metaphorical Cave In, the abandoning and crumbling of that fear, that will inevitably follows.
Bournemouth’s pop-punk quintet Buffalo Go! come to the stage with their debut recording, the angry pulse and outward looking, Cave In with great credentials. The songs are the right measure of at ease surrounding intermingled with fresh resentment and antagonism strewn through them. Like a diver finding a new trail to explore in a system of underwater tunnels, the way might be littered with dead ends and sapping strength moments under the water as breath becomes a fight, but once the way has been navigated and mapped it becomes a special moment of success.
For David Gentry, Martyn Combstock, Hayden Harris, Lawrence Rees and George Grey, Cave In must arguably represent a wonderful feeling of achievement; the songs are at their fire driven burgeoning beginnings and they can, like a volcano finding that it needs to let off steam, only grow hotter as the time progresses.
The tracks Caught Up, Mantis, Light Patrol, Fight Milk and Just Call Me Circuit Breaker are cool, delving, inquisitive and alert, they fight each jagged rock that protrudes out and which is designed to catch them unawares, with honour and the necessary gumption to know the path ahead may be long, that there is no short cut in the unmapped, yet their sense of direction will see them alright to the entrance of the musical cave and the wide world beyond it.
An enjoyable debut from Buffalo Go!, the world will expect more of the same.
Buffalo Go! release Cave In on September 5th.
Ian D. Hall