Rock Industry got then chance to speak to Liam Cormier, lead singer of the Cancer Bats, backstage at their show at Colchester Arts Centre.
E.W: How have the first few dates of the tour been going? Have there been any standout moments or incidents so far?
L.C: Everything so far has been rad; I mean all the shows are really cool. This is the biggest one so far. We played Brighton, Belfast, Dublin and Cork, and then tonight, which was rad. The Brighton show was in this super tiny basement, a little room with a two hundred capacity, so it was rammed.
E.W: What do you make of the British audiences? Does their response to the band differ from that of other places you play?
L.C: I mean, I think their awesome cos there just like excited kids. I wouldn’t say like there was a difference. Kids are kids and rowdy kids rule! We’ve always had a really good reaction when we come to England; the audiences are rad, so that aspect always makes us want to come back. Every time we come back the shows get bigger, which is awesome.
E.W: You’ve released a tour E.P; can you tell us a little bit about it?
L.C: Yeah, we have one brand new song and three covers, so we did a reissue of the CD with those four tracks and it also comes with a DVD.
E.W: Your selling vinyl as well.
L.C: Yeah, we kinda decided to do that ourselves, cos we couldn’t get it sorted contract wise. We couldn’t get some one else to do it, so we thought f**k it, we really want to have vinyl, cos we all collect it ourselves. We were like; this is something that is important to us, so we paid to do it.
E.W: Raw guitar always sound much better on vinyl!
L.C: Oh yeah, and there’s always like so much more bass. Vinyl always sounds better, hands down!
E.W: Your most recent album ‘Hail Destroyer’ has been received pretty well, how have you found the reaction to the album?
L.C: I think it’s been awesome; we were really excited the way people were kinda vibing off of it. It seems people were really excited about it. We were really worried when we were putting it out, cos it’s a lot heavier than ‘Birthing the Giant’. We thought that going a bit heavier might put people off but they responded well to what we were doing, so we did it. We were stoked because we’re a lot more proud of what we are doing. That’s not to say we were bummed with ‘Birthing the Giant’, those were the first songs that we’d ever written, so it was kinda like we’d come all way from that point and had figured out what we were doing. We felt with ‘Hail Destroy’ this was were the band wanted to be, in terms of playing and personally with the development of my voice after two years of touring.
E.W: The album seems to be a celebration of the chaos of existence. The lyrics on tracks like “Deathsmarch” with lines like “Day after day, another minute sold…Your time stolen for a minimum wage.” Can be seen to reflect the current economic crisis. Was this your intention or is the song a comment on the general financial/emotional struggle throughout life?
L.C: I guess so, I hadn’t thought about it that way! I think it’s more a general comment. Obviously it’s relevant now but when I wrote the song I had no idea this was gonna happen. It’s more like everyone’s had the issues of working at a job that you hate, when you’re in a state when you thinking all I wanna do is get over this. Everyone’s had that really, it’s for everyone who’s been through this.
E.W: Is it important to you to write songs that reflect the current situation of our times? There’s a good balance between the personal and the political which is needed otherwise it could get to heavy or preachy. Is this a conscious decision you make when song writing?
L.C: I guess, I never think about being too political, because it’s a lot more personal. I do try and make sure on a personal level that the lyrics reflect everyone in the band. That way everyone gets covered, so I’m not really excluding anyone. Between Mike [Peters – Drums] and Scott [Middleton – Guitar] they’ll say, o.k. this makes sense; I like to make sure the lyrics don’t just appeal to myself. It’s like I’d never write a song about Straight Edge as it’s something that’s really important and personal to me.
E.W: So the lyrics are as much from their point of view as yours?
L.C: Yeah, at least in the way that I want them to o.k. everything, because if they relate to the words then that will mean other people will be able to as well, that’s really important to me. It’s cool in that sense to get the o.k. and they’ll call bulls**t on a line if they think it’s wack.
E.W: The videos you’ve made are excellent. “Pneumonia Hawk” and “Lucifer’s Armchair” are very humourous, is it important to you guys to give the songs that extra dimension?
L.C: Yeah, we’re not the most serious people in the entire world! We like having fun, were not like really dark dudes, even though we play in this heavy, sometime angry band we’re able to have some fun with the stuff we do. I love ‘Lucifer’s Armchair’ and ‘Pneumonia Hawk’ because they were the two most super fun videos to make, whereas videos ‘Hail Destroyer’ are awesome and it turned out well but making videos is the hardest part of being in a band. ‘Hail Destroyer’ was like fourteen hours a day of head banging! At least with ‘Lucifer’s Armchair’ we were doing fun stuff like cruising around.
E.W: Is the van surfing moment in that video a homage to the movie Teen Wolf?
L.C: Yeah, there was a little bit of that! I’m glad it translated well cos when we where filming it, you know the director and I are really good friends and we skate, so we really wanted to do it. The rest of the film crew, even though most of them skate, were so over cautious and over protective. I get why they we like that, cos if I had f**ked myself up it would have been the end of the video, but at the same time it was just like come on! They wanted to have safety harnesses and Mark, the director, and I were like we’ve both surfed on the top of cars, everyone here has! When we were filming it the dude was driving so slow and I was up there trying to pretend that I’m stoked while thinking this is lame! I was stamping on the hood asking him to go faster but the crew were like, no we’re really worried, Mark and I got out voted, we always get out voted on the videos when it comes to safety stuff.
E.W: Do you work with the same director a lot?
L.C: He’s done every single music video and I’d like to say he’ll do everyone we’ll ever do. Cos he’s done six and they all rule!
E.W: You’ve recently worked with Gallows on their new album ‘Grey Britain’. Can you tell us a bit about that?
L.C: Well we just did the gang vocals, they just liked our healthy, manly, Canadian voices! They wanted us to be part of the record, which is awesome. They were like you should come and sing on the backups. It’s kind of a good idea to get guys in bands to do it, cos it’s a lot quicker and easier when your working with people who’ve done it before. We banged out all the gang vocals for that in four hours, we were professional, brief!
E.W: No mucking about.
L.C: No f**cking around!
E.W: Any plans for a new album? Have you written or recorded any new material? Are you going back to the studio after you’ve toured?
L.C: Yeah, what were gonna do is take this summer off to write and record a new album. We’ve got four songs but we’re still figuring it out, the main thing is that we don’t want to do ‘Hail Destroyer’ times two. At the same time we don’t want to do something that moves to far away from that, I really wanna push the idea we had with that album, but I know we can out do that album. There are so many rad records that are coming out right now that are getting me stoked. There are so many bands going for it and pushing what they do, that’s what gets us really excited. It will be heavy and rad, that’s all I know!
Words: Emma Webb
Pictures: Felicity Matten