The Cab Returns: Inside Chasing Crowns, a 15-Year Comeback Fueled by Survival, Sound, and Second Chances

Fifteen years is a long time to disappear in pop-rock years. Long enough for trends to rise, collapse, and resurrect themselves on TikTok like ghosts with better lighting. Long enough for a band like The Cab to become less a group and more a memory.

And then, just like that, they’re back. Not quietly. Not cautiously. But with Chasing Crowns, a sprawling 18-track return that doesn’t ask for your attention, it demands it.

Born in Las Vegas and forged in the chaos of teenage ambition, The Cab always had a knack for big hooks and bigger feelings. But Chasing Crowns feels different. It’s less about chasing radio play and more about chasing meaning. Written over a decade, across cities and setbacks, the album reads like a stitched-together journal, each track a scar polished into something worth showing off.

The band calls it their “little miracle,” and it’s hard to argue. This is a record shaped by time, distance, and the kind of life turbulence that either breaks you or builds you into something sharper.

There’s a philosophy running through the album, one borrowed from the Japanese art of Kintsugi, where broken pottery is repaired with gold, turning damage into design. That ethos bleeds into every note here. Nothing is hidden. Everything is highlighted.

Sonically, The Cab refuses to sit still. “Locked and Loaded” punches with guitar-driven urgency, while “Back From The Dead” feels engineered for late-night drives and festival crowds, a redemption arc you can dance to. “Sweet Kerosene” glides with polished confidence, while “Hellraiser,” written for frontman Alex DeLeon’s daughter, lands with a quiet emotional weight that lingers long after the final chord fades.

And then there’s “ih8yourgutz,” a sharp-edged centerpiece that leans into the band’s willingness to evolve without losing their melodic instincts.

But the real story of Chasing Crowns isn’t just in the music. It’s in what happened between the albums.

When Tom Barnas caught up with Alex Marshall ahead of the band’s nearly sold-out return to Chicago’s House of Blues, the conversation drifted between nostalgia, survival, and the weird reality of growing up in a scene that once felt frozen in time.

The Cab, it turns out, started the way a lot of great bands do, by accident. A battle of the bands collision between Marshall’s group and another outfit eventually fused into something bigger. Back then, piano wasn’t “cool,” so guitars took over. The rest followed.

What didn’t follow was longevity, at least not right away.

After years of relentless touring from their teens into their mid-20s, the band stepped away. Life filled in the gaps. Skills sharpened behind the scenes. Every member became a producer. Control shifted inward.

That independence defines Chasing Crowns. No outside shaping. No label-mandated polish. Just the band, finally steering their own ship.

And then came the moment that changed everything.

Marshall revealed a health scare that reads less like a footnote and more like a turning point. Sepsis after surgery. Forty-eight hours to live. A line in the sand that forced everything into focus. Surviving didn’t just bring him back to life, it brought him back to the band.

That urgency hums beneath the album’s surface. You can hear it in the way the songs stretch, push, and refuse to settle.

Even their past found a way to catch up with them. “Angel with the Shotgun,” a deep cut that never saw single status, went platinum during the band’s hiatus thanks to streaming and TikTok. Now it closes their shows, a full-circle moment no one saw coming.

There’s humor in the comeback, too. Touring in your mid-30s isn’t the same as touring at 17. There are jokes about selling canes at the merch table, about icy hot being as essential as guitar strings. It’s self-aware, a little bruised, but still hungry.

And when the conversation winds down, it lands somewhere perfectly Chicago. Barnas suggests West Loop for food. Marshall asks if he’ll be at the show. He won’t. Lake house in Wisconsin. Priorities.

Still, the sentiment sticks.

Because Chasing Crowns isn’t really about the crown at all. It’s about what survives when the chase is over. The relationships. The scars. The songs that somehow outlive the silence.

The Cab is back. Not as they were, but as something more interesting.

Something earned.

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