Cancer Bats

Word of the downfall of metalcore hasn’t reached Toronto’s Cancer Bats. While the popularity of the genre seems to have waned over the past half-decade, the Bats prove that fast, loud, metal/punk hybrid music can still find an audience. Maybe it’s because the group is so keen to lace its riff-heavy music with elements of sludge metal and thrash, which pushes its music outside of tidy genre boundaries. The Bats have also done a tour as Bat Sabbath—a Black Sabbath cover band done in Cancer Bats style—which makes them impossible not to like. Their latest, Dead Set On Living, is due this month courtesy of Metal Blade Records.

Updated 04/04/2012