CANCER BATS TAKE OVER HUNTER'S
INTERVIEW BY MATT DIXON, MAY 12TH 2011. ABOVE PHOTO BY AMANDA FOTES (X) SHOW PHOTOS BY MATT DIXON

Cancer Bats: the band that never sleeps. The thing that really strikes me about your band is your undeniable work ethic. Relentless touring, writing, putting out records, doing interviews, making music videos, it just goes on and on. You just got back from a month in Europe and before you can even catch your breath you're heading out across Canada and back. After all these years how do you stay motivated and inspired to hit the road and do what you do?

Liam: We've always wanted to tour as much as possible from when we first started the band. We would see all of our friends bands out on tour all over the world and we couldn't wait to hit the road hard. We started touring in Canada on our demo and we had a 10min set, we just couldn't wait to start touring even to write more songs haha. From there we realized that tour is pretty easy. You just have to be ok with sleeping where ever you can and be good at living off $5 a day. With that mentality we took every opportunity we were offered. It didn't matter to us what money we were getting paid, we just made it work, because we wanted to travel and see the world. The other thing that helped was that none of us had places to live so we basically made touring our home. The same theory went with putting out records we just wanted to keep the momentum going so we had to keep putting out new records so we could keep touring, cus otherwise we'd have to get real jobs and that was not an option haha So now that things have progressed from living off $5 a day, the big thing that still keeps us motivated and wanting to play and tour is that all of the shows we play keep getting better and better. Now we have all these awesome people who come out to our shows who we've met over the years from all over the world and every night is amazing, and it helps because they now bring their friends. There's still lots of places we've never been that we want to go to and we still have all of the rad places we want to come back and play again so between all of that we're still going to be touring a lot. Now we're finishing off touring Bears Mayors Scraps and Bones and were gearing up to write a new record and I'm just getting excited wanting to out do what we've ever done before and write the best record we can to stoke out all those who've supported us so far!

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I want to talk about the beginnings of the band; It seemed from afar anyway to be a pretty tight knit group of bands coming out of southern Ontario at the time. Bands like Van Johnson, The Fullblast, Searching for Chin, and so on. What are your memories from this time? Do you find yourself getting nostalgic at times for those days?

Liam: Whoa those are some blasts from the past! Southern Ontario did always have an amazing underground scene. Back in the day when Scott was playing in At The Mercy of Inspiration and I was singing for a band called Vincent Black Shadow and we would all play shows together with Silverstein, Alexisonfire, Moneen, BoysNightOut, Hope To Die and so many other amazing local bands and you could see all of these bands coming up doing incredible things. It's funny to think when we were playing together at the Burlington YMCA that any of us would go on to do anything with our bands haha It makes me really feel lucky to have been a part of that scene growing up and getting to see so many incredible shows and to be part of such an awesome community that I'm still so close to 13 years later from when I first started going to shows and met all of these people. Pretty crazy to think about. My only hope is that those shows still happen and that kids are able to be part of the same type scene that we all were growing up. I have a good feeling that DIY Hardcore will never die. I still have faith!

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PHOTOS FROM HUNTER'S ALE HOUSE IN DOWNTOWN CHARLOTTETOWN, PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND, MAY 11TH, 2011