Grit. Determination. Blood. Sweat. Coffee. If you were to bottle what Cancer Bats have put into their two decades of mayhem, you certainly wouldn’t want to wear it as perfume, but it’d make for one intoxicating scent. There has always been an element of the reduced essence about these Toronto titans – primal and direct, but never at the expense of the profound.
Give Me Dirt isn’t about the muck-under-the-fingernails experiences of being a band, though, but rather the earth-beneath-your-feet, inspired by frontman Liam Cormier spending a year getting back to nature in the beauty of Nova Scotia. How, you may ask, does this translate to a hardcore punk record?
Well, on opening track World Wild Fire Dance Race, featuring Give Me Dirt producer Kurt Ballou’s Converge bandmate Nate Newton, this reflection on climate change has guitars that swirl around the listener like thick, suffocating smoke. Ocean Crash is similarly evocative, with its chugging build and guttural chorus akin to a tonne of seawater surging over one’s head.
