Cancer Bats
Searching for Zero
Release Date: Mar 10, 2015
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Heavy Metal
Record label: Metal Blade
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Album Review: Searching for Zero by Cancer Bats
Very Good, Based on 4 Critics
Based on rating 8/10
There's a moment during the song "Devil's Blood" on Searching For Zero where the instruments drop out one by one, until just Mike Peters' snare drum is carrying the beat, at which point the band slams into a devastating half-time groove before ripping through the scream-along main refrain. It's unlike anything Cancer Bats have put to tape in their decade as a band, and perhaps their most adventurous combination of hooky hardcore and stoner metal weirdness. It's also a perfect distillation of why Searching for Zero is such a compelling record and a testament to the band's musical progress: Cancer Bats' most experimental album might also be their catchiest.
Based on rating 4/5
Three seconds into ‘True Zero’, the second track on Cancer Bats’ fifth album, frontman Liam Cormier screams, ”May I remind myself who I really am”. That sense of rediscovery runs throughout ‘Searching For Zero’. Exhausted by heavy touring in 2013, the Toronto ragers used 2014 to recuperate. But tragedy wrecked their recovery: the deaths of several close friends left the quartet battered, bruised and uncertain.
Based on rating 7/10
Canadian metal-edged rockers Cancer Bats had a rough time leading up to fifth album Searching for Zero. Always road dogs, the band toured exhaustively in support of their 2012 album Dead Set on Living, taking a more traditional hardcore style to the stage every night and kicking off one leg of the tour with six individual shows in a single day. Along with a deeply taxing tour schedule, several friends and people close to the band died, leaving them in personal states of grief and turmoil.
Based on rating 2/5
It’s been almost a decade since Cancer Bats first came snarling into the hardcore punk scene, with raw voices and blood still fresh on their knuckles. Since then, they’ve tread many paths – whether under their current moniker or in the guise of their Black Sabbath tribute band Bat Sabbath – and covered much ground. It’s with their fifth album, ‘Searching For Zero’, that the quartet attempt to piece together their past – from musical styles to personal hardships - and, to some degree, pull it off.
'Searching for Zero'
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