Album Review: Cancer Bats - "Psychic Jailbreak"

Bear with us for a moment here, because we’re going to begin by not talking about the album in the headline that grabbed your attention.

Many genres of music, but most prominently rock and rap, are at their level best when the band is capable of telling a story with some weight.  Whether that was the ethereal wish for better days espoused by folk music sixty years ago, or the explosion of politically-motivated rap in the late ‘80s and into the ‘90s, wordcraft and messaging have served as a vehicle for artists to succeed, different but equal from the place upon which pure musical talent has catapulted so many others.

Punk and metal have their own entries into this manner of storytelling, though it is worthy of admission that their history with introspection and poignancy is somewhat more infantile than many of the laudable artists of the past.  That doesn’t mean that The Clash or Nuclear Assault were any less impactful or important than luminaries like Public Enemy or Buffalo Springfield, it just means that they lacked for a certain subtlety.

Yet, hardcore, the alleged fusion of punk and metal into a single being, has never been as willing to go into messaging beyond the superiority of the individual and the basic, endemic struggle to survive.  (With the noted of exceptions of bands like Earth Crisis or Cattle Decapitation, single-issue candidates who are overbearing in their insistence.)

And now we come to the Cancer Bats and their new album “Psychic Jailbreak.”  The Bats are that most unique of all hardcore bands (perhaps in some part because of their ability to bend the conventions of genre,) which is to say that they are an artist who has things to say.

This is really the power of “Psychic Jailbreak.” Vocalist Liam Cormier, possessed as ever of his casual, out-of-tune, half-screamed style, manages to wend through a vocal wordplay that impresses with its creativity and delivery.  There’s a lot of themes tackled here, many of them dealing with internal torment, as has become fashionable for aggressive music over the last decade or so.  In any event, the Bats separate themselves by demonstrating that all their songs say something.  Personal or universal, there are yarns being spun here.

But Cormier writes his lyrics outside the margins, often refusing an easy rhyme to make sure he’s picked the words he wants.  To wit, in “Pressure Mind” towards the end of the album, he bites out “Here we are, another day and nothing's changing / Thousand miles starring with my eyes wide / What's the plan asking in the mirror daily / It's 3am, TV is my best friend.”  Other than a regular cadence, there’s little there to suggest that this is lyrical verse.  In some regard, this pattern is similar to the great songs of Clutch, where Neil Fallon essentially just tells a folksy story that happens to be set to music.

Seldom does the lister to “Psychic Jailbreak,” have to decipher dense patterns of metaphor, like one would with countrymates Rush, but that it to the record’s benefit – density, as discussed above, would be ill-suited to this, and would stain the elegant simplicity of Cormier yelling repeatedly in “The Hoof” “my life was saved by a skateboard.”

Within all of this is the reality that this is also the Bats’ first album as a three-piece.  With longtime guitar player Scott Middleton departing and bassist Jaye Schwarzer doing double duty, there was some question as to what this record would sound like, and if the Bats could keep their reputation for catchy, accessible riffs couched within all the standard discordant cacophony that the band employs.

The answer to this is mixed.  “Lonely Bong,” probably the album’s best single effort viewed through the traditional Cancer Bats lens, still rumbles along with a simple, repeatable riff that hooks the attention and carries into the big singalong chorus.  This has been the bread and butter for Cancer Bats for the past fifteen years, and it feels just as accomplished here.

There are, however, fewer moments such as those, where the music feels familiar and within the mold of the band.  Which does serve to make “Psychic Jailbreak” diminished relative to the sublime, full-octane presentations of “Dead Set on Living” or “The Spark That Moves,” which were both vital and defiant and vitriolic.

Instead, we are faced with a new Cancer Bats model, and in that vein, the album’s real gem might be “Hammering On,” a borderline stoner metal slog sang entirely as a duet with indie rock songwriter Brooklyn Doran.  Cancer Bats have played in small pieces with this model over the years, but never given in full-bore to this kind of song.  It’s a haunting and absorbing piece that speaks to the band’s adaptability and shines perhaps a small light on what this next phase of the band may be.

In summation, we see Cancer Bats focusing on one of their most unique qualities, their storytelling, as their other principal talent, that of writing infectious riffs, may be under reconstruction.  In the end, is “Psychic Jailbreak” as sublimely excellent as “Dead Set on Living” or “The Spark That Moves?”  No, it probably isn’t.  Especially not if the listener’s goal is to bash around and forget their troubles to some joyous, unconscionably loud music.  That said, it’s a different kind of record, and should be enjoyed for what it is, for it has many excellent moments.