Man, back when Cavity were around, there were one of the most terrifying bands out there. Long before you had a million bands all copping their moves from Eyehategod's Take As Needed For Pain, you had Cavity, a bunch of goons from the Florida hardcore scene who were able to fully channel the sluggish, narcotized blooze-crawl of Eyehategod but warp it into their own sound, blending the massive slow motion sludge riffs and Rene Barge's hoarse, tortured screaming with furious hardcore and awesome dissonant guitar playing. Anyone who had an ear for diseased, bad-mood sludge like Eyehategod and Iron Monkey and Buzzoven were usually all about Cavity as well, and their Laid Insignificant, Supercollider and On The Lam albums are all crucial pieces of any serious sludge/doom metal collection. Next to Floor, these guys were one of the heaviest Florida band ever, able to swallow you up in massive, tectonic sludge and blats of nauseous feedback noise before clobbering you with a brutal Black Flag-like blast of energy.

Laid Insignificant from 1999 was the band's third album, and originally came out on Pushead's Bacteria Sour label. That original Bacteria Sour release has been out of print for years, so Hydra Head has stepped up with this re-issue CD that has a full remastering job as well as all new artwork from Aaron Turner. I still think that this is one of Cavity's best albums, opening with that creepy film sample and launching into the crushing narco-sludge of the title track, punishing and bleak like Eyehategod but with a seething, pissed-off attitude of their own, working it's way through the churning glacial buzz and funereal doom of "The Woods" and the thrashing angular violence of "Fingers On The Spider", alternating between creeping Sabbath doom and lurching, deformed hardcore, Rene puking his guts all over the fucking floor, the guitars so distorted that they sound like they are dripping black tar all over the studio, the whole sound thick and buzzing and vicious, even moreso at the end of "Fingers" when the song speeds up into burly thrash, fast paced punk infested with fithy black feedback and crazed atonal chords. Lots of speed on this album, enough to make new jack doom fans scratch their heads - "Marginal Man" barely breaks the 90 second mark, and it's insanely catchy, all crushing southern rock hookage smashed into concrete sludge and cathartic circle pit riff. So heavy, and so textured too, Cavity's use of feedback and noise was genius, and there are parts of Laid Insignificant where Cavity's guitars start to sound almost like an evil, pitch-black version of Quicksand's, all thick and dramatic. The cover of Septic Death's "Demon" is sadly not included here, but it is replaced by two short bonus tracks "Spine I" and "Spine II" that were taken from the original recording sessions and which had previously appeared on the now out of print Miscellaneous Recollections �92-�97 disc. Totally essential for fans of slow n' low heaviness from the 90's underground, and still has punishing today as it was when it was first released.