Cave In 'Until Your Heart Stops'

Cave In have had many musical identities since their inception in Methuen, MA, in 1995, but the one that first established them as underground heroes was the dizzying, face-ripping metal blowout now known the world over as Until Your Heart Stops.
- J Bennett / Decibel Magazine

Until Your Heart Stops continues and widens Cave-In's assault upon body and mind. The chugga-chugga chunks are still there, this time refined into escalating and edgy walls of sound that owe a large debt to Slayer. Newly present, however, are forays into psychedelia and noise. At times expansive and at other times dark and claustrophobic, these always aggressive ventures open new doors for Cave-In. When fused with the usual jarring assemblage of riffs, a bold and original heavy music is created. Perhaps the only band who has successfully tread similar ground is Neurosis. Until Your Heart Stops' production is a major force as well; the band's undertakings are captured and conveyed in a way that at times sound impossibly dense, balancing gut-stabbing bottom end with piercing highs. This is one key factor among many that burn away the hardcore framework through which Cave-In originally slipped.
- Matt Kantor / All Music

Forget Master of Puppets and the ever-evolving D&D discs of Mastodon for a minute. If there’s one metal record we reach for on a regular basis, it’s Cave In’s first proper full-length, the decade-old Until Your Heart Stops. A dizzying array of chord-climbing riffs, speaker-rattling vocals and traumatic time changes—not to mention the anvil-dropping rhythm section of drummer J.R. Conners and bassist Caleb Scofield—it’s a prime example of masochistic pop music, catchy but chaotic stuff that wouldn’t sound out of place while driving your car off a cliff.
- Self-Titled Magazine