MADE IN CANADA: CANCER BATS – The ABORT Interview (Issue 16 Preview)
March 10th, 2010 Filed under: 21 & Under With..., Exclusive!, Made In Canada by admin
(Click to enlarge | Photo – Sarah Hamilton)
Toronto-based hardcore outfit Cancer Bats are back this month with their new album Bears, Mayors, Scraps & Bones, new video, new tours and continue to break down the genre barriers that separate heavy music as a whole. Hardcore, punk and metal are all combined to give this band a nasty yet uplifting and vibrant take on a scene that has been dominated by radio-friendly, label-crafted fluff acts who look better than they sound. Not these guys, ugly as fuck and an even meaner stage presence, these gents possess the chops and songwriting skills to make Canada proud to be diagnosed with this terminal Rock & Roll disease.
ABORT Magazine’s Karla “Khaos” McLeod went one on one with vocalist Liam Cormier in a needle-littered alley on Vancouver’s notorious Downtown Eastside, for a quick update on the band’s current tour, their new album and why they chose to cover a classic Beastie Boys track.
Karla “Khaos” McLeod: You just finished playing on a US tour with Anti-Flag and Aiden. Now you are beginning your tour across Canada with Billy Talent, Alexisonfire and Against Me and after that you begin a tour in the UK. Do you find that the UK audience is more receptive compared to a more laid back Canadian audience?
Liam Cormier: Uh…I find I would actually say that the UK and Canada are very similar in terms of a gnarly, crazy crowd. Um, if anything, the United States is a little bit more subdued, in some areas because they see so many shows.
ABORT: Exactly.
Liam: You know, when you go to a small town like in Canada, it’s like, kids are going off, but we don’t have too many of those cities like Toronto, Montreal, maybe Vancouver, where they get a lot of shows and they get off you know. They almost get too many shows that they’re not excited anymore. Where as the US still has that to, you go to Montana and the kids are stoked, you know? you go to small town Ohio and kids are stoked, but so I guess that’s universal.
ABORT: You recorded the album Bears, Mayors, Scraps & Bones at Vespa Studios and worked alongside producers Eric Ratz and Kenny Luong (Billy Talent). How much of a role did you and the band play in the production of this album considering Billy Talent’s sound is little more pop-radio friendly?
Liam: Well I mean that’s the thing. It all depends on what band it is that they’re working on, like they’ve done you know, Three Days Grace and stuff like that. They’re all over the place, but I think they’re all old school metal fans. They come from listening to Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath and stuff like that, so for them, they’re just as stoked to be working on something heavy like us. But, I think it’s cool to have tons of different vibes like that in the mix, they appreciate what makes – you know, like a rad record, like you know Billy Talent and what tricks they use on that and that kind of production and it’s not just making a straight-forward hardcore record or a metal record or you know what I mean? So it’s not like, I find a lot times you just want to make something that’s close to your peers where we these two guys that aren’t even involved in hardcore or aren’t even involved in any of that stuff where they’re thinking completely outside of the box.
ABORT: They’re just trying to make a good album.
Liam: Yeah, exactly. They just wanna make it sound amazing. That’s all they care about, so, it’s definitely awesome working with those dudes.
ABORT: I really enjoy the production quality of the album. The album comes off sounding not too overproduced and raw. Overall it has a very live feeling to it. Can you tell me a bit about the recording process you went through and was it a “less is more” attitude?
Liam: Um, yeah, I mean definitely the live aspect was what we wanted to go for with this album for sure.
ABORT: You got it!
Liam: Yeah, thank you. Uh, it took a lot of work. It was basically like our reaction to you know, a lot of over produced things or realizing how like, easy it is to make up for mistakes in the studio, but for us we pride ourselves on being a live band and how much we tour. We want this record to represent exactly what people are going to come see, so for us when we’re writing the songs we were just rehearsing and practicing and jamming and you know what I mean?, just playing it over and over and over and over again, so we could do these full passes and we could play you know, essentially like a live band. With a recording, it doesn’t work exactly like that. You still need to have almost like; cleaner channels for guitar so you can get that crunch, but it’s like while Mike was playing drums, we were all playing along with him. I was doing vocal takes while Mike was like doing his drum tracks, so he had the live feeling while he’s doing his drums to keep that energy there.
READ THE ENTIRE INTERVIEW IN ISSUE 16 OF ABORT MAGAZINE – SPRING, 2010
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