Cancer Bats - Bears, Mayors, Scraps, And Bones

Having little need for fluffy adjectives and clever idioms and metaphors, Cancer Bats do a writers job for themselves: describing their record. If the title of their fourth full-length, Bears, Mayors, Scraps, & Bones, doesn’t describe their music perfectly, I’m not sure what could. Each heavy-hitting riff and pounding drum line drives the point home only through Liam Cormier’s disconsolate lyrics. Cancer Bats are at it again destroying faces one chunky riff at a time.

After opener “Sleep This Away” finishes up, “Trust No One” really opens the record with a fast paced guitar riff accented with a solid pinched harmonic. The song punches right through you down to Liam screaming “Lust” in your face again and again. But even here the largest problem of Cancer Bats plagues a solid track: the lyrics. While Cormier’s growl is abrasive and abusive in every sense, his words read like a pissed off preteen at times. The lyrical concepts prey around simple thematic subjects such as relationships and being tired of the things around you- they simply sound worn out, especially coming from a hardcore band.

What really takes Cancer Bats to the next level is their interesting fusion of metal and hardcore. Everything from the stoner rock of “Raised Right” to the classic metal riffage of “Doomed To Fail,” the Bats stretch their wing of influence all across the heavy spectrum and use it to their advantage at all times. With never a dull moment on their 45 minutes, there is little room to criticize their unrelenting musicianship. There isn’t a track that drags through the mud waiting for something exciting to happen and it couldn’t have been executed any better.

Being a band that seems to know what they’re good at, Cancer Bats never stop doing it: rocking your face off. Bears, Mayors, Scraps, & Bones may not push the envelope in completely new ways or step into extremely technical territory, but it succeeds in its purpose and is a fun-loving, stir-the-pit kind of record. While there may always be room for improvement, Cancer Bats have yet to disappoint, and Bears.. is no exception.