Cancer Bats seems like one of those bands who is perpetually in the youth of their career. It’s something to do with the vitality of their sound, as well as their chosen genre. Hardcore has a flair for sounding young by itself, and there’s an intrinsic quality to Liam Cormier’s vocals that denies the natural effect of aging.
It’s easy to forget then, that the band’s new album, Give Me Dirt, marks the twentieth anniversary of their debut record. Which is worth mentioning in this context - as raw as Cancer Bats can often sound, there is no doubt that it is intentional; the grit and visible seams and loose ends are intentional and by design. It’s impossible to have lasted this long and have that not be the case, and an equally notable feat to sound so brash and tread the line of noise without descending into madness.
That does not mean however, that the Bats (may we call them simply the Bats?) haven’t fine tuned or evolved. Every album since 2012’s excellent Dead Set on Living has worked to refine the band’s signature chaos and come up with new and novel ways to craft great hooks while staying true to their hardcore roots. It hasn’t always worked - Searching for Zero was something of a mess - but by and large the Bats have always found a way to keep themselves relevant and fresh by incorporating rock grooves into their sound.
Moreover, the veteran Torontoans have taken from their own previous experiments and combined that knowledge into this new record. To hear “Ocean Crash” is to see a possible evolution of the slow thump that made the previous album’s “Hammering On” work so beautifully.
As ever, what really makes the Bats stand out from their contemporaries in the hardcore scene is their invocation of the big, hook-laden rock and roll riff. The spindly, groovy opening of “Long Tooth” is the same kind of sensibility that made most of the album The Spark That Moves such an automatic classic. There are few artists who better understand that a big chorus and a memorable hook can connect disparate pieces of almost any composition.
That doesn’t mean that Cancer Bats can’t still hammer with the best of them. Album closer “Fools Like You” is a ready-built, down-and-dirty hardcore banger that feels at home on the album, but also would be just as comfortable in the dirty, street-corner clubs of Brooklyn back in the ‘90s.
Now, there is a dark cloud over all of this. As good as Give Me Dirt is, and it is, it seems very familiar. As evidenced by what’s been said so far in this piece, the band is at their best when they sound like themselves on previous efforts. It’s not unfair to say that Give Me Dirt is an amalgam of Dead Set on Living and Psychic Jailbreak and in so doing, this album lacks the pure visceral nastiness of the former and the refined exploration (such as one can have in hardcore) of the latter. That’s not wholly a death sentence - but it does imply two potentially damaging things. First, that in an effort to cannibalize their lessons and synthesize new avenues, the band has trimmed off too much of their edge and possibly done some regression to the mean. Second and more concerning is the possibility that after twenty years the Bats have hit their creative limit. It’s much too soon to make that judgement now - after all, Searching For Zero was a dud, but they followed it up with their best album in The Spark That Moves.
Anyway, don’t get too carried away here. Give Me Dirt is good. Really good. For longtime fans though, it may be hard to escape the feeling that this record has been heard before.
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