Cancer Bats - Give Me Dirt - Album Review
REVIEW BY: MONIKA OBERSCHEVEN-SMTIH
There are some bands that become part of your life so gradually that you cannot actually pinpoint the moment it happened.
Cancer Bats are very much one of those bands for me.
I could not tell you exactly when I first stumbled across them, although I have vague memories of adding Birthing The Giant to my collection somewhere around the beginning of my Cancer Bats obsession. From there it somehow became a case of rarely missing an Australian tour, photographing them, reviewing them, talking to them and eventually becoming friends with these Canadian radlords in such an organic way that I genuinely could not tell you when the transition from “band I really like” to “people I actually care about” happened.
They have also somehow become the soundtrack to an unreasonable percentage of my life.
Housework? Cancer Bats.
Running errands? Cancer Bats.
Driving around with absolutely no destination? Probably Cancer Bats.
My random playlist deciding that apparently I need to hear three Cancer Bats songs in succession? Completely acceptable.
They have been lurking in my listening habits for so long that their music has become almost muscle memory to me. Which makes Give Me Dirt a particularly interesting record to sit with because my brain has this wonderfully convenient inability to compare a band's previous records to whatever they have released next. I do not listen to a new album and immediately start mentally ranking it against everything that came before. It arrives, it exists, and I get to experience it as something new.
And somehow Give Me Dirt manages to feel both completely familiar and completely new at the same time.
That is probably the biggest compliment I can give it.
There is an immediate sense of “oh, THIS is Cancer Bats” that hits somewhere in the first few moments, but it never feels like they have simply wandered back into a room they have already trashed and decided to do the exact same thing again. There is familiarity in the DNA, absolutely, but the record has its own personality. It has enough of those recognisable Cancer Bats ingredients to make an old Bat fan feel immediately at home whilst still having enough movement, texture and personality to make it feel like a fresh chapter rather than a nostalgia exercise.
That is where I think Give Me Dirt is going to absolutely smash it with the existing Bat Army whilst also potentially creating a whole new generation of Baby Bats.
The record feels alive.
There is that unmistakable sense of movement that has always made Cancer Bats so much fun to listen to, with songs that feel like they are constantly trying to launch themselves out of the speakers. There are moments that hit with the kind of ferocity you expect from them, but there is also enough variation throughout the record to stop it becoming one long wall of noise. It breathes. It shifts. It punches you in the face and then occasionally gives you enough room to realise you have been holding your breath.
And then it does it again.
There are guest appearances scattered throughout the record too, with Nate Newton, Chris Cresswell, Brooklyn Doran and Efrem Schulz each bringing their own presence into the Cancer Bats universe without making the album feel like some sort of celebrity guest compilation. They feel like additions to the world of the record rather than distractions from it, which is exactly how collaborations should work.
Perhaps the thing I keep coming back to is just how ridiculously easy this record is to fall into.
I know these songs are new. My brain knows these songs are new and yet there is this bizarre familiarity that creeps in as you listen, the same feeling I get when an old Cancer Bats track randomly appears in a playlist and my brain immediately goes “YES, THIS ONE” before I have even consciously registered what song is playing.
Give Me Dirt somehow manages to trigger that feeling without simply sounding like a greatest hits package.
That is a difficult balance to pull off.
It is nostalgic without being stuck in the past. Familiar without being predictable. New without feeling like the band have suddenly decided they need to reinvent themselves into something completely unrecognisable.
And then there is the artwork.
Liam has absolutely gone feral with this one.
The artwork is intricate, detailed and filled with enough little visual discoveries that you can sit there staring at it and continue finding tiny things you somehow missed five minutes earlier. It feels like the kind of artwork that belongs on the physical record because you actually want to hold it, turn it around, stare at it and inspect all the ridiculous little details rather than simply seeing a thumbnail on a streaming service before pressing play.
Which brings me to the part where I become the embarrassing proud band Mum again.
I am ridiculously proud of these guys for this record.
Not because I have known them for years. Not because I have photographed them more times than I could probably count without embarrassing myself. Not because they are friends.
I am proud because they absolutely fucking smashed it.
There is something particularly satisfying about watching a band you have followed for so long continue to create music that gives you that immediate “yep, that's my Cancer Bats” feeling whilst still giving you something you have not heard from them before.
After more than two decades of doing this, they could very easily have settled into simply giving people what they already know they like.
Instead, Give Me Dirt feels like a record that remembers exactly who Cancer Bats are whilst still having absolutely no interest in standing still.
And that is what makes it work.
The old Bat fans are going to find plenty here to sink their teeth into. There are enough familiar ingredients, enough chaos and enough of that unmistakable Cancer Bats energy to make this feel like coming home after being away for far too long.
But I also cannot help thinking about the people who are going to discover them because of this record.
Somewhere out there is a future Baby Bat who is going to put this album on for the first time and have that same stupid grin I have had on my face for years.
And honestly?
I am very fucking here for it.
Give Me Dirt feels like Cancer Bats doing what Cancer Bats do best, but with enough new dirt under their fingernails to remind you that even after all these years, they are still capable of getting their hands dirty and building something new.
And as someone who has been along for a rather ridiculous portion of that journey, there is something pretty bloody special about getting to hear it.
