Rocker (feedbot)
Platinum Member
What do you do after seven albums as Canada’s hardest band? Take a break of course, and after two decades of head-banging, Cancer Bats surely deserved their time off. ‘Give Me Dirt’, their latest album, is supposedly inspired by nature and travel, but that’s like saying ‘Blood Meridian’ is a book about cowboys. Yes, it technically is, but with the harshest, most unrelenting nightmare-adrenaline poured on top so that the summary doesn’t even seem to encompass half of what really happens. The side of nature that vocalist and lyricist Liam Cormier channels into ‘Give Me Dirt’ is red in tooth and claw, monumental and awe-inspiring, and mostly a loose ribbon to tie together Cancer Bats’ most ambitious album to date.
We knew what was coming, as ‘Stay Stuck’, last year’s single drop, feels like an avalanche in itself, a song for seizing the day and letting the pit take you wherever it wants to. ‘Don’t Trip’ contains the same rush: the sensation of your muscles tensing, ready for fight-or-flight to kick in. That’s what Cancer Bats do so incredibly well, and they’ve turned that quality up to the maximum on ‘Give Me Dirt’. Just take the title track, for instance. Clanging shifts into stripped down riffs into chanted ferocity and a sensation of being dared to respond like we’re each being personally challenged to go harder. It’s a magnificent four-minutes, and having a clear vision of what Cancer Bats wanted to accomplish helps us see through the fuzz of distortion and out the other side.
While we’re here for Cancer Bats, we’re loving that they’ve brought their friends along for the party. Nate Newton of Converge joins the gang for the blistering opener ‘World Wild Fire Death Race’. It’s a song of devastation and surviving by the skin of your teeth, stacked with endless guitar laid down at a breakneck pace. ‘Bright Eyes Of Gold’ sees Chris Cresswell of The Flatliners digging in for a song of resistance against all forms of oppression, and Brooklyn Doran steps away from her usual queer indie scene to lend her vocals to ‘Long Tooth’, a song that swerves between desolate beauty and near-painful ferocity. If you’ve been wondering what Efrem Schulz of Manic Hispanic and Death By Stereo has been up to recently, now you know: he’s been adding a layer of solidarity via vocal cameos. ‘Fools Like You’, the track where Schulz take the lead, drags the punk end of the Cancer Bats sound to the forefront, and it’s just as incendiary as you might imagine.
While the special guests make all these tracks, well, special, the real surprise on ‘Give Me Dirt’ is ‘Ocean Crash’. It’s a narrative of a journey to destruction, with an unexpectedly clear vocal from Cormier and a slow, pulsing bass that feels like it could be a movie on it’s own in the right hands. The way that Cancer Bats can make a song feel like the end of the world is inevitable is masterful, and shows how far they’ve evolved. Search beneath the fuzz and fury and you’ll find that this is a deeply personal record that comes from the heart via the strong core muscles needed to headbang and scream through it. “I’d rather be a dreamer than dying inside,” yells Cormier on ‘Positive Grid’, and his sense of ambition and resolution is what makes ‘Give Me Dirt’ such an exciting record. This is a new step for Cancer Bats towards a destination that has yet to be revealed, but wherever it is, we’ll have a damn good time reaching it with them.
Kate Allvey
We knew what was coming, as ‘Stay Stuck’, last year’s single drop, feels like an avalanche in itself, a song for seizing the day and letting the pit take you wherever it wants to. ‘Don’t Trip’ contains the same rush: the sensation of your muscles tensing, ready for fight-or-flight to kick in. That’s what Cancer Bats do so incredibly well, and they’ve turned that quality up to the maximum on ‘Give Me Dirt’. Just take the title track, for instance. Clanging shifts into stripped down riffs into chanted ferocity and a sensation of being dared to respond like we’re each being personally challenged to go harder. It’s a magnificent four-minutes, and having a clear vision of what Cancer Bats wanted to accomplish helps us see through the fuzz of distortion and out the other side.
While we’re here for Cancer Bats, we’re loving that they’ve brought their friends along for the party. Nate Newton of Converge joins the gang for the blistering opener ‘World Wild Fire Death Race’. It’s a song of devastation and surviving by the skin of your teeth, stacked with endless guitar laid down at a breakneck pace. ‘Bright Eyes Of Gold’ sees Chris Cresswell of The Flatliners digging in for a song of resistance against all forms of oppression, and Brooklyn Doran steps away from her usual queer indie scene to lend her vocals to ‘Long Tooth’, a song that swerves between desolate beauty and near-painful ferocity. If you’ve been wondering what Efrem Schulz of Manic Hispanic and Death By Stereo has been up to recently, now you know: he’s been adding a layer of solidarity via vocal cameos. ‘Fools Like You’, the track where Schulz take the lead, drags the punk end of the Cancer Bats sound to the forefront, and it’s just as incendiary as you might imagine.
While the special guests make all these tracks, well, special, the real surprise on ‘Give Me Dirt’ is ‘Ocean Crash’. It’s a narrative of a journey to destruction, with an unexpectedly clear vocal from Cormier and a slow, pulsing bass that feels like it could be a movie on it’s own in the right hands. The way that Cancer Bats can make a song feel like the end of the world is inevitable is masterful, and shows how far they’ve evolved. Search beneath the fuzz and fury and you’ll find that this is a deeply personal record that comes from the heart via the strong core muscles needed to headbang and scream through it. “I’d rather be a dreamer than dying inside,” yells Cormier on ‘Positive Grid’, and his sense of ambition and resolution is what makes ‘Give Me Dirt’ such an exciting record. This is a new step for Cancer Bats towards a destination that has yet to be revealed, but wherever it is, we’ll have a damn good time reaching it with them.
Kate Allvey