Cages are back with Better Mistakes, their second album, set to drop on February 21, 2025. Hailing from Ludwigsburg, Germany, the band takes the guts of ‘90s screamo, folds in hardcore’s urgency, and adds just enough melody to keep the bruises feeling fresh.
Six tracks, raw and unpolished, tackle personal anxiety, mental health, and the social-political mess we all try to survive. It’s intense but never wallows—always leaving a crack of light for hope to shine through.
Their latest single, The Metaphysics of Losing a Friend, is barely two and a half minutes long, but it cuts deep. It’s about grief, but not in a melodramatic way.
The song feels more like a quiet conversation with yourself when everyone else has left the room. The guitars sway between grit and melody, the bass holds it all together, and Micha’s vocals hit that sweet spot between a shout and a confession. It’s short, sharp, and doesn’t waste a second pretending to be anything other than what it is—raw, real, and relatable.
Cages aren’t here to impress you with perfection. The album’s rough edges are intentional, recorded at Fieser Schwan Studio and mastered by Will Killingsworth at Dead Air Studios. You can feel the early 2000s screamo influences all over this record—bands like Orchid and Saetia come to mind—but it doesn’t feel like a copy-paste job. There’s a vitality here, like they’re ripping it straight out of their guts instead of just playing to the style.
This band is DIY to the core. From the ground up, everything about Better Mistakes has their fingerprints all over it. Micha not only fronts the band but also made the video for Masters of the Universe, the opening track. That song nails what the band is about: calling out self-righteous egos and closed-minded bullshit, set to a driving mix of screamo intensity and melody.
Even the album’s artwork—designed by Micha under his alias schwarzer.rand—stays in-house. They’re not just making music; they’re building a whole world around it.
This isn’t a one-label affair. Better Mistakes is coming out with help from Through Love Rec. (Germany), New Knee Rec. (USA), Shove Rec. (Italy), Fireflies Fall (France), Slow Down Rec. (Finland), Mevzu Rec. (Turkey), and Rufen Publishings (Japan). Each label’s involvement feels like an extension of Cages’ ethos—small, tight-knit communities connecting across borders to keep this kind of music alive.
“Lyrically, it’s about self-righteous claims to absoluteness and the paternalistic megalomania that comes from closed worldviews,” the band explains. That’s the vibe of Masters of the Universe, and it’s no surprise they chose this track to introduce the album. Fast, sharp, and unrelenting, it’s everything Cages do best in one song.
Better Mistakes isn’t trying to sell you a polished product. It’s six tracks of messy, honest, and cathartic music from a band that doesn’t just preach DIY—they live it. If you’ve ever felt like the world is too heavy but somehow still worth fighting for, this record might just hit you in the gut where it counts.