About Cave Dweller Music
Cave Dweller Music first began in June 2020 when James and Matt decided to make a closed music group on Facebook to share music with their friends.
Initially, it wasn't a serious project, and we named it Not Your Grandfathers Music Posting Group. Soon a Facebook page came to join it by the same name.
Over the coming months, the page exploded and it was decided that the name and brand had to change to something more serious and Cave Dweller Music was born.
Growth didn't stop there and we had to bring Brendan and Yari on as admins to keep up with how much content we were receiving. We forged ties with Nick Mxhl and Hessian Firm as our first official partner as we continued to grow. We now maintain a growing roster of over a dozen writers and continue to seek more.
We also have plenty of other ongoing projects, including brewing our own beer and our interview-based podcast series.
We look forward to what the future holds, so follow us to see where we go from here.
The Core Cave Dweller Team
Here's a little bit about us.
James Sweetlove
Lead Admin, Primary Contact, Podcast Host and Founder (San Diego, California, USA)
James was born in South Africa but spent most of his life living between New Zealand and Australia and now calls California home. He comes from a sales, marketing and government background and has a bachelor's in anthropology and history and a post-grad in political science. He currently works in marketing and owns and operates the music PR company Shred Storm PR and the non-profit digital record label Heritage Harmony Records. He also hosts the Cave Dweller Podcast series and is a monthly contributor to the Doom Charts. He has loved alternative and extreme music for over 18 years. He listens to an ungodly amount of music ranging from death, black and doom metal to dark ambient, harsh noise, folk, punk, reggae, hip hop, ritual, industrial, dungeon synth and dark country, and just about everything in between.
Matt Lynch
Admin, Radio Host, Podcast Host and Tech
(Brisbane, Queensland, Australia)
Matt has had a long career being a serial pest across a number of platforms, having spent many years working in radio, running podcasts, working on music and zines (R.I.P Too Fat to Skate and TBC Mag), and generally being involved in local music scenes. You could find him several glass pies deep trying to sell art from someone he’d only met that night at exhibitions or in the same state yelling over barriers at shows before launching his dumb ass off the stage. He's been writing reviews and interviewing bands long enough to call it a career though without the money to show for it. Music isn't his only passion, being an obsessive reader with interests in politics, philosophy, and history. The man has hosted graveyard shift radio shows playing whatever tickled his extensive fancy, new release country music, and breakfast radio with all the pop hits, and everything in between. Now It’s time to go back to his bread and butter; focusing on alternative and extreme music.
Brendan Smith
Admin, Podcast Host and Head Brewer (Connecticut, USA)
Brendan is a career chef by trade with over 17 years of professional cooking under his belt, he has two children with his wife living in CT. Brendan is a man of many hobbies like BMX biking and getting involved with live shows passing out flyers for new events or local bands and venues just to help out, he got involved with heavy music as a teenager getting into the hardcore/punk and metal scene in the New England region where his DIY attitude came from, as he got older he took up home brewing and has been doing so for the last six years, and happens to be Cave Dweller's brewmaster. Writing is a recent passion, but one that he has taken to quickly and plans to plenty more of.
Yari Wildheart
Admin, Contact and Editor
Yari's passion for music extends to his professional life as an advocate for freedom of expression in legal & political scholarship. His tastes in music (from hip hop to opera, to punk, pop, and even obscure patriotic songs from central Asia) are quite broad, and difficult to pin down to any particular area - but he has a passion for the underground. That means Yari often seeks new material and projects to broaden Cave Dweller's horizons, no matter the genre or style. Owing to his interests in history and world cultures, Yari is always looking for international bands to listen to and review - from Brazil, to Indonesia, to Kenya and anywhere earthly or beyond, he's interested.
Aaron Michael Kobes
Admin, Writer, Editor
Amateur music reviewer, along with weird-fiction & high fantasy enjoyer and writer. Though he loves all music, from The Velvet Underground and Earth and Pillars to 70’s pop, he is most fond of the various underground scenes in extreme music, and is particularly fond of Dungeon Synth, that being the focus of his next creative endeavor under the moniker Sleepy Wizard. He is patiently awaiting the arrival of his first born with his Wife Haley, and his dog-R.E.O Speedpuppy, and two cats-Hatshepsut and Roo
Sidney Davidson
Admin, Writer, Editor
I love history, movies, sports, and music of a great variety. I enjoy exploring a band's discography and finding rare releases, and I probably hoard physical media too much for my own good. I am happy to be a part of a community where I can discuss my more extreme music taste; a historian and researcher by education, I could spend hours talking about band discographies and history. Finding extreme music from unlikely sources is a thrill for me! Happily married to a supportive wife.
Writers and Guest Writers
Outside of our core team, we have several writers and guest writers that submit reviews on a regular basis.
Carlos Mackenzie (A.K.A. Mack)
Writer
Amateur writer of poems and essays, amateur music reviewer in Fuzztlán (dedicated to Stoner, Stoner/doom, psych rock and sludge metal in Mexico), bass player in a Stoner band and a heavy rock/Stoner band, inveterate reader and he loves to take pictures. He loves all music with a good bass line: funk, punk, ska, classic rock, Stoner and all styles relative to the genre. Cat lover, poetry lover, he likes live music, food, beer, tequila and mezcal.
Naz Basaran
Writer
Naz is from İstanbul/ Türkiye. They had written for several online magazines over the years about films, music and arts & culture in general. Naz also has an online radio show they make weekly on Radyo Modyan about films and soundtracks. They love writing about how things make them feel and their own thoughts about matters. Naz loves french fries and everything they do is dedicated to their pup in heaven Arthur.
Keszia Tyler
Writer
Keszia is a New Zealand based writer, reader, thinker, and all-around creative type. With a Bachelor of Arts and a Graduate Diploma of Teaching in Secondary - both specialising in English and Drama; she loves to work with words to help others better understand new experiences. Her high school years were filled with alternative rock & metal such as My Chemical Romance, Seether, Nickelback, 30 Seconds to Mars, and pop rock like Fall Out Boy and Panic! at the Disco. Her musical horizon has since expanded to include genres like rap, blues/jazz, electronic, pop, and more.
Tom Hanno
Writer
Tom has been writing album reviews since 2017, but has been on a lifelong journey to share the music that he loves with everyone with ears. He currently runs Tom's Reviews, is a Doom Charts contributor, while also writing for sites like The Third Eye Psych Blog, Doomed and Stoned, The Sleeping Shaman, and now for Cave Dweller Music.
Brian Lloyd
Writer
Brian is typically into prog metal and post-metal but leans into the avant-garde and tech death as well. He is an avid tabletop role player and collects comics, toys, board games and random other bits of gothy housewares. He loves that he gets to be a part of such a diverse and interesting group of music lovers who have such a wide variety of tastes, as his tastes in music tend to go from bands like Hum all the way to Cattle Decapitation. He has lived in the Detroit area his whole life, played music in the scene for over 20 years and has been reviewing music for the better part of 10.
Nick Mkhl
Guest Writer
Nick has been listening to metal since his early teens, constantly listening to a wide variety wherever he went. Whether it be in the war-torn streets of Tripoli, Lebanon, the Northern beaches of Morocco or on top of a mountain in Morayshire, Scotland. Nick listens to the classics a lot and tries to understand their magic while also branching out his horizons towards new sounds and styles. He runs the label Hessian Firm, while also playing in a few bands like Kepler and Sic Semper Tyrannis.
Jarrad Robertson
Writer, Occasional Podcast Host
Having always been obsessed with music and having the attention span of a toddler, Jarrad’s musical tastes jump around from day to day. But one rule has always been constant, the music needs to feel dangerous. And not just in a “Holy shit, what was that!” way. Danger comes from testing boundaries, or reimagining the standards. Its comes from an artist making you feel they would bleed to get the track down. Or when a track feels like it could fall apart at any moment and is hanging on by a thread.
Jarrad has tried for many years to convince people that he is a musician, most recently with his band Sea Lungs. And is now trying to convince people he is a music writer and interviewer. We’ll wait and see…..
Scott Mclatchie
Writer
Scott Mclatchie is a Non-binary multi-disciplinary musician/artist who is obsessed with the exploration of music, dabbling in genre-specific zines as a teenager and involvement in DIY music has solidified their love of music and music scenes as a whole. Scott listens to a wide variety of genres and loves to learn more about what makes each scene tick, but specifically loves to explore heavier genres such as Black Metal, Emo, Skramz, Funeral Doom, Post-rock but also genres like synthpop, ambient and techno. Scott plays in a number of local Naarm bands such as The World At A Glance, Alloxylon and VVARP, but was previously in bands Diploid and Idle Minds amongst other projects with friends. Outside of music Scott is an artist exploring painting, ink and video art and loves the interplay between art and music and the fluidity of each medium..
Christian Voltaggio
Writer
As a kid who grew his hair out in 8th grade and never looked back, the rest of life quickly became a distraction from the main questline - uncovering and devouring as much music as possible. After an initial enthrallment with guitar heroics via Led Zeppelin, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Pink Floyd in his youth, he chased the rock and roll bug to its extremes and is currently a dissonant death metal die-hard who wrote his History thesis on Norwegian Black Metal. Discarding the trappings of academia for the blue-collar life, he currently owns a small interior painting business, enjoys wargaming, reading, and playing guitar in his band Lightdrinker while splitting his time between both coasts of the US.
Jaret S. Young
Republication Partner
Jaret has been involved in music in one capacity or another for over 30 years; whether it was DJing at his college radio station or playing drums in a rock band. Most recently, he's been the multi-instrumentalist behind the industrial band Wake-Up Screaming. He lives in San Diego, California with two cats and more musical instruments than furniture.
Alfred C. Key IV
Writer
Alfred Key is a musician who plays in the metal band Bullvine. He has written music and literature since the age of seventeen. He was first to write at fourteen when he read the book Night by Eli Weisel. The work inspired him to write dark works that portray the grizzly reality of the streets. At fourteen years old he was introduced to music with his first love being Led Zeppelin. He started writing for Cave Dweller Music when answering an online ad. Alfred works, lives and plays in the central coast and plans on making music and literature for sometime.
Podcast Editors
Aside from Matt we have other editors that help out with the editing of our podcasts, their work is greatly appreciated.
Matt Snyder
Podcast Tech and Guest Writer
Snyder is a grizzled old guy from Toledo, Ohio who's been banging his head in bands since the early 90's. Currently he scratches his itch with the bands Hope Hole, Pandemaniac, and Mold Golem. Matt also contributes reviews for the site.
Official Partners
These are the entities that we have an official partnership with and fully endorse.
Hessian Firm
Record Label/Review Site
A collective of passionate musicians, writers, artists, and music aficionados united by their shared passion for Metal music and the surrounding culture. Both a label and music review site. These guys were Cave Dweller Music's first official partner, back when we were still Not Your Grandfather's.
Website
Facebook
Bigcartel
Amplified SD
Publication, Podcast, Studio and Live Space
Amplified Studios is a music production studio operated by musicians and engineers located in San Diego. As well as a publication and podcast covering local music events in San Diego, write-ups/reviews on local artists, interviews with underground acts, photo showcases, and more.
Facebook
Instagram
Website
Labels, PR Firms and Individuals We Endorse
These are other labels, PR firms, and individuals that we trust, and endorse, show them some love.
Clawhammer PR
A full service music promotion and media relations company specializing in heavy metal and hard rock.
Facebook
Trespasser PR
An artist and a PR personnel under one moniker, creating artworks, photography, and related designs by commission, handling public relations and copy-writing for artists, bands, and labels.
Facebook
Other Sources That We Enjoy
Here are some of the sites/pages that we follow and you should too.
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We Riff in a Society
Metal music and memes. Self described as a "SATANIC COMMUNIST ORGY OF CASTRATION"
Facebook
Contact Us
Hit us up with any queries or submissions below!
