Rock act Cave In has split with RCA, vocalist/guitarist Stephen Brodsky told Billboard.com last night (Sept. 8) after a solo performance at Lit in New York. "We're free agents," he said. "We haven't decided on a label for our next album." The group's lone release for RCA was 2003's "Antenna," which debuted at No. 6 on Billboard's Heatseekers chart.

Brodksy said Cave In is "two or three songs away from having a solid record. Not everything we have right now is album-worthy, but it's getting close. We need a few more 'motherf***ers' -- songs that have the elevated essence of riff."

New tracks like "Heavy Metal Hand Grenade," "Trepanning" and "Resin Pyramid" will make up about half of the band's set list on its upcoming tour with Converge, which kicks off Sept. 24 in Montreal. "It's nice to be able to screw around with the new songs every night, so we can then translate that to their studio versions," Brodsky said.

Although signing with RCA failed to take Cave In to the proverbial next level, Brodsky said the experience has been beneficial for the band in the long run. "We're so psyched about these new songs," he observed. "They wouldn't be what they are if ['Antenna'] had done better. That made us push ourselves a bit more."

"This is a good thing for our band," he continued. "For a few years, I didn't feel like our sound developed as much as I'd have liked it to. It's very exciting for us right now, because we have something new to offer people. We're not always easy to grasp."

Brodksy is at work on a new solo album and unveiled a handful of tracks during his set last night, which also featured Cave In's "Beautiful Son" and "Everest" plus a cover of Morphine's "I'm Free Now." The show doubled as a CD release party for Bad Moon Music, featuring former members of Split Lip/Chamberlain. The trio's debut release, "Empire," is out now via Hawthorne Street Records.