Cable’s Pummeling New Album Descends Into Welcome Heavy Metal Madness

Connecticut’s at this point long-running heavy band Cable come roaring back to life on their new album Take The Stairs To Hell, which follows more than a decade without new music. The new songs burst with the kind of foreboding energy that the title suggests, ending up some of the most oppressively heavy, sludgy, doom-laden rock you’ll hear in awhile. After pushing play, it’s like all of a sudden there’s a musical thunderstorm on the scene bearing down on you and the rumbling is only getting louder. Via the new Cable album, it’s time to confront this darkness that might for now just exist as a mental image but has plenty of “real world” ramifications. The band make this process exciting as they keep their onslaught up throughout the record while never really settling on a definition of what comes next, leaving the album’s aftertaste ominous in a welcome, exhilarating way.

Bassist/vocalist Randy Larsen has explained that the songs on Cable’s new album were born from his own “personal hell,” so the thematic feel makes a lot of sense. He’s confronting some of the destructive force that has previously weaseled into his own life and is no doubt relatable to many who will come in contact with the album, and he and Cable have clearly invited listeners along for the ride with their musically oppressive metallic hardcore hybrid. The music itself helps capture some of the darkness that Larsen mentions, and Take The Stairs To Hell is as a whole a very experiential record that it’s exciting to step into. It feels like an extension of our world that the band have made for our collective examination. The stakes are high, and those involved can feel the tension spiking, but the process will continue all the same.

There’s not a particularly “happy” ending presented on this record at any point, although there is a definite progression. After a straightforwardly heavy, sludgy rock track opens the record and Cable progress through the definitely standout, cacophonous song “Black Medicine,” the final two songs on the album — the latter of which is fully instrumental — let the listener down into a kind of dark, foreboding resolve. Although there’s an uncertainty about what exactly is going to come next, and it certainly doesn’t seem to be the happiest, most upbeat thing in the world — it will come, and we will face it. A subtle but substantively invigorating thread along those lines runs through and defines Take The Stairs To Hell.

5/5 Stars

The full album is available July 26 via Translation Loss Records. Listen to some and pre-order below.