Cancer Bats

Canada has been very good to us of late and joining the ever-expanding ranks of kickass Cannucks are Toronto's Cancer Bats. From the blistering force of storming lead-off track 'Golden Tanks,' to the fury and passion of knockout finisher 'Pneaumonia Hawk' (with Alexisonfire's George Pettit on guest vocals) there is little let up in 'Birthing the Giant's 40 minutes of shredding, fist-tight metal-dipped hardcore. Adopting a searing, rapid-fire assault, Cancer Bats ooze terrace-style choruses. 'Birthing the Giant' plays like a sugar-rush pick'n'mix of Cancer Bats impeccable record collection and it certainly deserves a place in yours. - Kerrang

How can you hate an album that boasts titles like Firecrack This and Ghost Bust That? The answer, obviously, is you can't. Big, brash and ballsy, this debut kicks all kinds of ass, and should represent the benchmark for all young Canucks wanting to do the ruckus thing. What's the X-factor separating them from the profusion of young and hard (pun absolutely intended) acts? A Southern rock twist, which, when blended with the Bats' raging punk and hardcore, infuses this release with a subtle touch of swagger, so you'll know it's going to kick your fucking teeth out before it does. Awesome. - Hour

When I call a band to conduct an interview, I usually tend to end up talking to a groggy musician who a few seconds ago was napping in the back of the van, who may have played a bad show the night before in the middle of desolate Northern Ontario, and who probably doesn’t even like journalists anyways.

With the Cancer Bats, however, the experience was a little different: when the phone was answered, I asked whether or not I was talking to a member of the Cancer Bats and was greeted by a sonorous “Fuck, yeah!” The interview progressed from there.

Ontario’s Cancer Bats have built their success from the ground up, originally spreading the word about their band by spray-painting their bat symbol all over the alleyways of Toronto. When asked about the origin of their name, vocalist Liam Cormier explains that Cancer Bats are nothing more than “Scary Bats with cancer”—or, perhaps, merely bats that give you cancer.

“Sometimes people ask, ‘do you guys mean cigarettes?’“ he continues. “Uh ... no. We’re talking about evil animals.”
That topic dispensed with, I moved on to discussion of their album Birthing the Giant, so named, explains Cormier, because of the seemingly never-ending delays that plagued the recording. Eventually, however, things would work out for the best, as the album was released on the famed 06/06/06, a coincidence the band only realized after the date had been set.

“We all went ‘holy shit!’” Cormier enthuses. “We didn’t pick that date knowing it was the evilest day ever.”

Although a show slated for the release date in Fredericton didn’t produce any of the evil happenings one might expect, Cormier does think the show was especially amazing and wasn’t sure whether or not the devil had anything to do with it.

Speaking of the devil, however, the Cancer Bats have started to become regular faces on MTV Canada, in both live interviews and performances. While some people, this reporter included, often regard MTV as a loathsome institution and a shell of its former self (back when it, you know, actually played music videos once in a while), Cormier and his mates see it differently.

“We weren’t weirded out because we knew some of the people who worked there,” explains Cormier. “It wasn’t the big evil ordeal everyone makes it out to be.”

Cancer Bats are the farthest thing from corporate rock whores, however, and actually became a bit of a problem for their booking agent by insisting on playing small bars, all-ages shows and community halls exclusively on their first Western Canadian jaunt.

Local hipsters would be well served by taking in this show, because it will give them the opportunity to bitch that subsequent shows in places like Red’s don’t come close to besting the intimate show you saw at The Velvet Underground back in ’06. V
- Vue Weekly

The Cancer Bats are punk rock. They're other things, too. They're loud, they're hard, they're a lot of fun. But most of all, they're punk rock. They cut their own seven-inch singles, they spray paint their own merchandise and they don't have any cheesy melodic parts. It's just good ol' punk the way your parents never liked it.
"We're all pretty punk rock, D.I.Y. kids," admits Bats vocalist Liam Cormier. "Like this morning when I woke up, I wasn't doing coke, I was cutting seven-inches. We all come from punk rock and hardcore."
Though the Bats hail from the same southern Ontario area as bands such as Silverstein, their style of raucous punk is far removed from the melodic screamo of their contemporaries and sounds more akin to groups like The Bronx.
"We started this band about a year-and-a-half ago while I was living in Montreal," says Cormier of the band's origins. "My friend Scott Middleton [guitarist] was living in Toronto and he used to play in a metal band called At The Mercy Of Inspiration, and he was coming down to visit me because we're good friends.
"We talked about how we wanted to start up kind of a rock 'n' roll hardcore band, and he said he wanted it to be different from what he was doing in his metal band. We both liked a lot of the same bands, so we started up this project to have fun.
"He would come up to Montreal to jam, and we would be really excited because the songs were really cool. We decided to get some more people, and I came down every weekend to Toronto, and we kept doing that and everything got better and better, and I ended up moving to Toronto to be in the band full-time. I was living in my friend's kitchen because we really wanted to do this."
Along with using graffiti art to design their own T-shirts, the band were prone to leaving their mark around Toronto's downtown core.
"For a while, when we weren't playing shows, we had all this excitement going on around the band," says Cormier. "So every weekend, me and Andrew would wheat paste bats all around the city. That's just us being really into graphic design and being big art nerds."
The band's self-distributed EP has been bought up by newly converted fans who saw them tour all over southern Ontario last year opening for bigger acts, including Alexisonfire and Every Time I Die. The band are working with Juno Award-winning producer Gavin Brown, who has worked with Billy Talent and Three Days Grace.
"The record's gonna be a banger, and a ton of fun," states Cormier. "Hopefully the kids will want to come out and headbang to it. We just want the kids to come out and have a good time because that's what we do, we play fun punk rock shows."
Though still young, the Bats are already familiar with the rigorous touring schedules of a D.I.Y. punk band, and they plan to trek on throughout the year. "We want to have everything mixed and mastered by mid-April, and then we're just gonna go on tour," asserts Cormier.
"We want to tour right across Canada right when that's done, do stuff through the U.S., come back, wait for the record to come out, then go back out on tour. Basically, Cancer Bats are gonna destroy the world in 2006”
—Shehzaad Jiwani
- Chart

They're back - Cancer Bats are making another Maritime appearance, but this time they've got reason to celebrate. The band's debut full-length, Birthing the Giant, is set to come out June 6 (that's 6/6/6 for those paying attention).

Cancer Bats' guitarist Scott Middleton says the band couldn't be more excited about finally getting a proper album into stores after years of touring without an official release under the band's belt. "We had been trying to get it out all year. We didn't really realize how much work it was going to take. We also didn't want to rerecord all our material because when we write new songs we would like them to be better than our old stuff. We thought about throwing in an acoustic song, but let's save our White Album for another time." White Album, Birthing the Giant is not. The album closely follows the spirit of Cancer Bats' previous recordings, which are a series of CD EPs as well as a seven-inch on coloured vinyl with handmade sleeves - a real treat for those who got their hands on a copy. Its 11 tracks are vicious blends of hardcore, punk, and metal - largely thanks to the musical experience of many band members. Middleton played in Toronto metal act At the Mercy of Inspiration, bassist Andrew McCracken plays in the traditional hardcore band, Urban Blight, and drummer Mike Peters was recruited from Figure Four and also played in Rogue Nation.

Middleton stresses that the quality of the new album is much better than anything they've done in the past, but still carries the same desperate energy that sees the band playing every note as though it's going to be the last they ever make.

"Oh yeah, it's Cancer Bats, there's no doubt about it. The songs we write and play have a signature energy and feel. There will be some surprises in terms of trying new things - some songs are more melodic, some heavier and faster.

We tried a bunch of different stuff, there's a wide variety. Liam still sounds like Liam, he's not trying to sound like Coldplay. It's like this metal-hardcore-punk hybrid. You can listen to this and hear better songwriting." Once the album comes out, Cancer Bats are going to focus heavily on touring for the foreseeable future. Although they missed out on festival appearances such as the Warped Tour - which generally wants bands to have albums out upon applying - they're going to focus on hitting all the big cities and small towns across the country. Despite touring for close to two years, the band has yet to make a trip to western Canada, something they're looking forward to.

They also hope to promote themselves through outlets such as Much Music and MTV Canada, where they recently made a live appearance.

A video for Birthing the Giant's first single, 100 Grand Canyon received heavy rotation on Much Music, which prompted the band to record another video, this time for the song French Immersion.

"Our last video got a lot of play on Much Music and we're happy about that. It's totally made a difference to us. Our first instinct isn't to go play Much Music or MTV, it's a little far removed from what we do - which is kind of ignored. But out of nowhere these stations are taking chances and being aggressive in programming.

I don't see a lot of bands like us being played in the middle of the day next to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. We haven't compromised anything to do that and it seems that Much Music and MTV realize that kids want to see something different. If they want to support Canadian talent and down the line play awesome band like Risky Business, then that's cool," says Middleton.

- here magazine

Cancer Bats
Birthing the Giant
Currently the best punk rock band in the world that isn't The Bronx, this Toronto band have the best name ever (unless you are a bat that has cancer). - NME