"Anchored by crushed synthesizers and cathartic screams, Junoplast Cave turns self-repudiation into an explosive exercise in Amazonian post-grunge industrial rock."
Now I feel the pressure, but the fear killed me,” Matheus Brevis intones over a skeletal, throbbing synth pulse during the opening moments of That Me. There is an icy, claustrophobic detachment to his delivery that reads less like melodramatic theater and more like an autopsy of former identities. By the time he mutters “I don’t wanna be that me,” the emotional balance tips from numb regret into open revolt. Rather than softening the blow with polite reverb or radio-friendly vocal sheen, the band pushes the close-mic recording right against the listener’s ear, making every low swallow and tense breath register with uncomfortable clarity.
When the rhythm explodes at the one-minute mark, the arrangement detonates with the abrasive mechanical crunch of mid-period Nine Inch Nails. Drummer Daniel Pinheiro avoids predictable quantized fills, instead slamming through snappy snare transients and wide open cymbals that leave raw air in the room. Alongside him, Arthur Cunha lays down a thick bed of fuzz-drenched bass, while guitarist Ruann Magno piles on squalling harmonics and detuned analog oscillators. The low end remains dry and authoritative rather than muddy, giving the band enough headroom to make the sudden jump between minimal synth mutterings and screaming walls of noise hit like an iron door swinging shut.
The friction sharpens as Brevis pulls back for the second verse, dropping into plainspoken clarity: “That me was not myself / That me was just someone / That me just wanted to be approved.” It is a stark confession about the exhausting performance of social assimilation, stripped of high-concept metaphor. Brevis climbs out of this quiet shame by pushing his voice straight into a ragged, full-throated roar on the subsequent hook. The vocal line does not lean on pitch correction to smooth out the cracks. You hear the physical strain in the cords as he belts against the rising synth feedback, treating the vocal mic like a punchbag.
Formed in Belém, Pará in 2019, Junoplast Cave has spent the years following their debut EP, How to Stop Bad Thoughts, shaping an idiosyncratic regional identity out of heavy rock influences. Operating far from the dominant urban music circuits of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the northern Brazilian quartet recently gained attention by capturing live performances on a floating barge in the Amazon basin. Yet rather than indulging in acoustic folk tropes, their kinship with Queens of the Stone Age and Royal Blood proves that heavy riffing can belong just as genuinely to the Amazonian riverways as it does to desert highways or damp rehearsal basements.
Clocking in at over five minutes, That Me earns its extended run time through patient dynamic pacing and an unsparing final crescendo that collapses into brooding synth textures. It refuses to settle for the tidy, two-minute algorithmic brevity that dominates contemporary alt-rock playlists. By tethering psychological panic to uncompromised volume and tactile analog muscle, Junoplast Cave proves their sound has teeth, weight, and a perspective that cuts far beyond regional borders.
