Liam calls this era “a real turning point”. As well as looking outward, it was about this time they began looking inward to how they actually ran their affairs as well. The new album may be coming out through Marshall Records, but in many parts of what they do, Bats have used all their on-the-road training to take on a lot of work at the back end themselves. For a time, he and Mike were booking all of the band’s Canadian touring themselves because “we have literally every promoter’s phone number, so we were just doing it all over text.”
“If we weren’t doing the band, we would either work at a record label or we would work at a management company,” he enthuses. “We decided we should just be managing ourselves, we should just be like doing all of these things that we’ve learned how to do, and to kind of be in more control over.”
Continuing to work on the shop floor like this is one of the reasons why people love Cancer Bats in the way that they do. Liam being a people person, and genuinely one of the nicest folks you could ever hope to meet helps. Knowing those connections are still there are one of the buttresses that keep them all going.
“Having an interaction where people say how much the band means to them, it feels a little bit more like an act of service, us doing this band,” he says. “It feels like people are genuinely getting something out of seeing our band live, or listening to our records. You have a rough day, and come to a Cancer Bats show, and then be like, ‘Everything’s gonna be okay!’ I’m like, fuck yeah, that’s like 100 per cent why I want to still be doing this, why I want to still be there for those people.”
On Give Me Dirt, there’s a lot of this. Liam’s PMA has always been at the forefront of Bats’ lyrics, as have the other catharses it helps unknot. Here, with the grit of the record, it stands, grubbier, but taller than ever.
“I’m always mindful of that, especially knowing that people really love our band for that. I know that’s something that they want out of a song. They’ll tell me when they’re bummed out, they listen to us, or when they’re having a really hard day. But that’s not necessarily just for the PMA all the way.
“I wrote Stay Stuck, and I was like, ‘Sick, this feels like a Cancer Bats song’. It has that fun sentiment, same with Positive Grit. It’s still PMA ’til I’m DOA, but it’s updated now to how I’m feeling today.”