12.55, Main Stage

Deep blue almost cloud-free skies and soaring temperatures – hardly ideal atmospheric conditions for Boston’s CAVE IN to make an impact, one would think. But, after ‘Stained Silver’ and ‘Jupiter’ get them off to a solid if unspectacular start, the dense and muscular likes of ‘Joy Opposites’ and especially ‘Youth Overrided’ somehow seem in perfect sync with the prevailing mood. They can’t resist the temptation to introduce some jarring dischord into proceedings, though, bludgeoning their way through two double-bass-pedal-heavy brutes from their screamo metal past – a past so unfamiliar to most that frontman Stephen Brodsky feels the need to tell the crowd that they’re not cover songs. After this self-inflicted sabotage, ‘Anchor’ and ‘Inspire’ then represent some kind of attempt to re-rail the set. They might sound more like a slick focused post-hardcore powerhouse these days, but their potentially perilous ambition and capacity to straddle apparently incompatible genres of rock music remains evident.