BOOTLEG: EXCLUSIVE CANCER BATS TRACK, “AGENDA SUICIDE”

In our never-ending quest to give you, the reader, the best music available, we present the Revolver Bootleg series. Throughout each month, we’ll post cool, new, and often-exclusive tracks right here for you to hear before anyone else.

This installment is a non-album cut by stoner-rock-influenced Canadian metalcore group Cancer Bats. A cover of “Agenda Suicide” by Nebraskan neo-new-wavers The Faint, the song almost made the Bats’ latest, Hail Destroyer (Metal Blade). Read on to see what vocalist Liam Cormier has to say about why it didn’t make the cut but is still unique.

REVOLVER Was this an easy song to record?
LIAM CORMIER The song was a little tough to figure out for us, only because it was originally done with a lot of keyboards and had parts layered on top of one another. So we had to pick and choose what we could play on just bass and guitar and still have it sound like the original song. Once we figure that out, the song is really structured so it all fell into place from there.

Why did you want to record it?
I like the idea of a band taking a song that sounds nothing like them and making it their own. I loved the idea of taking an electro-dance song and making it a really heavy, sludgy Cancer Bats song. At the same time, I like that it’s not that so far from the original that people can still tell what it is.

Why did this song not make the album?
We thought about having the cover on the album but we ran out of time in the studio and had to just focus on our own songs and save it for later. I'm glad we waited, because then it wasn't rushed for the covers and we could have more fun with it.

What sort of feedback have you gotten on this song so far?
Most kids just think that its a new Cancer Bats song whenever we play it, but there's always one or two Faint fans in the crowd that will get excited and sing along.

Cancer Bats: "Agenda Suicide"

Photo by Luca Benedet