How would you describe the Cancer Bats' sound?
I like to think of it as our A.D.D mix of every genre that we're all stoked
on, like punk, hardcore metal, stoner rock, everything. Because none of
us can completely agree on everything, we all come from different backgrounds,
so it all gets funnelled into the sound that we have.
Having fun in England?
We're having an awesome time, we love coming over here. For us it's
nicer to come to England and Europe than go to the US, because this
feels a lot more like home to us. It sucks that it's like a flight over
here, but there's a bigger difference in culture between Canadians and
Americans, than Canadians and British people. It feels like we're a
lot more welcomed here. We played this show in Glasgow on the night
of the big Rangers game, and our promoter was telling us that it was
gunna be the worst show of the tour, and then not many people came,
but the ones who did show up were just so stoked, and even though the
venue was half-full everyone rocked out just as hard.
What do you think of the English metal scene?
It's awesome, there's a lot of good bands that are coming out of here.
Not just the metal scene, but the music scene in general is really rad,
like there's so many different shows and everyone goes to see different
bands. It's cool that there are so many good hardcore and punk bands,
and even people into good indie stuff.
What do you think of hardcore bands losing the punk aesthetic in
favour of more commercial metal aspects?
I think that's the trend right now, and there's a lot of bands that
cant help but get swept up in that. But whatever, there's good bands
and there's bad bands in every scene so when something gets really popular
a lot of kids will just start playing that style, but they'll grow up
eventually.
What do you think the future holds for hardcore and metal in general?
I guess music is kinda cyclical, so if bands like Suicidal Tendencies
and Metallica never got big in the 80's we wouldn't have found out about
them. Even Green Day getting big and exposing punk rock is great because
is get's younger kids who might not have found out about that music
involved. Its great that there's a larger DIY element to hardcore and
punk rock at the moment, and things like that always trickle down and
gets kids excited to want to start their own bands and get into it for
the right reasons. And that's gunna keep happening, and its great because
a band like Gallows, who didn't get because they're fabricated, it's
because they're a good fucking band.
With bands as diverse as Black Flag and Led Zeppelin as influences,
do any of you have any guilty pleasures?
We don't really feel guilty about anything we're into, so we'll all
admit to liking the bands that we like.
None of you into Britney then?
She's got some good tracks. The thing is, Britney Spears doesn't write
any of that music, so the people that are working for her are really
talented, so every once in a while there's a really great song, like
Toxic, that was a fucking banger. Whoever wrote that was fucking awesome.
Are you pleased with your new record?
I'm really happy with how it turned out, we never thought people would
get into it as they did. We just sort of shut ourselves away and outdo
Birthing The Giant for ourselves. We were really worried that no-one
would like it when we finished because it's a completely honest album
that's heavy and everything that we wanted to do. But it turned out
people really like the heavy songs so that was cool. It's given us validity
to the idea that we can do whatever we want, that we don't need a part
in every song with cleaner singing; I yelled a lot more on this record
and the guitars are heavier. It's really exciting that it happened and
people liked it.
http://www.myspace.com/cancerbats
Thanks to Liam for his time and Ian Cheek for setting things up.
Pix by Jay Wolf
Intro half inched from http://www.punknews.org
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