Dead Set on Living

The band has stated that the album is to be a more "upbeat" follow up to their previous album Bears, Mayors, Scraps & Bones, with vocalist Liam Cormier saying the album was lyrically far too dark for what the band wanted to do.[2] In December 2011, Liam Cormier was asked about whether the groups sound has change much. "I think sound-wise there's definitely more of the natural evolution of how gnarly we keep getting and how more refined everyone sounds. I'd say the majority of our fans now have seen our band live and know how gnarly and ferocious it is, so trying to compress that into a recording still is kind of difficult. Like we'd say 'I thought we did it pretty well on Bears', and then we'd re-examine it and see there's still some elements that are missing."[1]

The band's influences steered away from the "traditional hardcore record" and took a wide variety of influences from indie rock bands like Fleet Foxes. Cormier, when asked about his influences, stated: "In a lot of ways we get really inspired by non-metal bands. For me, I find I really like looking at other things because I just don't want to make a traditional hardcore record lyrically. So for me, I listen to a lot of indie rock and I've been getting super psyched on a lot of that, like the new Helplessness Blues by Fleet Foxes".[3]

The album was initially promoted by an album teaser made by the band in December 2011, revealing that it was planned for an April 2012 release.[4]

The first single planning to support its release "Old Blood" being released.[5] A music video was released for "Old Blood" and was played on Scuzz weeks before release online.[6] On 24 January, Distort Entertainment released the video for the single online.[7] On March 7, 2012 Cancer Bats released a second music video in promotion of the album for the song Road Sick.[8] On April 10, 2012 Cancer Bats uploaded the second track Bricks and Mortar onto YouTube to stream.[9]

Cancer Bats will start the touring cycle for Dead Set on Living with six performances in one day in London, England on April 21, 2012. The venue locations for the mini-tour, dubbed the Pentagram Tour, form a pentagram shape when seen on a map. About the unique structure of the tour, Cormier said, "We've already done three shows in 24 hours—that's now old hat," and that "it's funny that no-one has done this before."[10] All six shows sold out within a week of going on sale.[11] Hassle Records used social media outlets like Twitter to consolidate band and fan interviews and bootleg footage from the tour.[12]

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	(75/100)[13]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AbsolutePunk	(76%) [14]
BBC Music	(unfavourable)[15]
Big Cheese	(4/5)[16]
The Fly	[17]
Metal Storm	[18]
New Musical Express	(7/10)[19]

Dead Set on Living received generally positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 75, based on 9 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews"[13]

All tracks are written by Liam Cormier, Scott Middleton, Mike Peters and Jaye R. Schwarzer.

Cancer Bats

• Liam Cormier – lead vocals
• Scott Middleton – guitar, backing vocals
• Mike Peters – drums, percussion
• Jaye R. Schwarzer – bass guitar, vocals

Additional personnel

• Eric Ratz – production
• Kenny Luong – production