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CABLE  Variable Speed Drive  CD   (Translation Loss)   13.98


It's weird to think that this album originally came out on the same label that has released stuff from emo-pop heavyweights like The All-American Rejects and Get-Up Kids, but back before Doghouse Records became known as one of the biggest indie-pop labels around, they put some pretty aggressive stuff from the hardcore scene. Inarguably, one of the heaviest albums that Doghouse ever put their logo on was the 1996 debut from the Connecticut band Cable, a twitchy mass of crazed metallic hardcore that's pretty far removed from the newer, sludge-rock version of the band that we've come to know through their subsequent releases on Hydra Head, This Dark Reign and Translation Loss. When Cable released Variable Speed Drive, the band was mining a then-new sound, combining ferocious hardcore with ultra-dissonant riffs, crushing metallic distortion, heart-attack shrieks, and angular song arrangements that put them in the same company as bands like Deadguy and Turmoil, all early proponents of the chaotic metallic hardcore sound that would spread everywhere by the end of the decade. Listening to this earlier version of Cable, you can also hear how much post-hardcore, early emo and math rock were a part of the band's DNA, apparent in the driving moody melodic hooks that show up constantly across the eight songs, and the parts where Cable breaks off into quieter sections of discordant guitar and Slint-y instrumental workouts. I hear a lot of Slint's influence on this album to tell you the truth (just check out the song "The Sinking Vessel" for proof), and there are actually some really beautiful moments to be found in the jagged wreckage of Variable Speed Drive, glints of melody and lush harmonies spotted in the midst of their churning skronk-metal and crushing riffage, and while this album is unmistakeably from a certain time and place in the evolution of underground music, the songs actually hold up really well compared to the other stuff that came out around the middle of the 90's. Variable Speed Drive is important not only for fans of Cable who never heard the genre-defining music that the band created before their stint on Hydra Head, but also to anyone interested in the genesis of metallic hardcore and math-metal, as Cable was there at the beginning. Out of print for close to ten years, Variable has been re-issued and remastered with all new artwork and packaging by Translation Loss, who also included an additional three bonus tracks taken from Cable's 1994 demo which features then-bassist Jeff Caxide, who obviously later went on to play in Isis.


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