On April 21, 2025, Cancer Bats woke to the sound of jets. They were staying at a hotel next to Indianapolis airport after a sweaty show at the city’s Black Circle Brewing Company. They were just four days into a 26-date tour and everything was going great. Well, it was until the band walked outside and saw a large empty space where their van and trailer had been parked just hours before.
The Canadian hardcore band – vocalist Liam Cormier, bassist Jaye R. Schwarzer, drummer Mike Peters and their new guitarist Jackson Landry – had become used to rolling with the punches on the road, but this theft was a sucker punch and a half. The airport hotel was supposed to be safer than downtown.
“It’s almost par for the course,” Liam shrugs now. “You deal with little things: a smashed van window, a stolen bag, or getting your laptops and passports taken. It sucks, but you figure it out. Twenty years into the game, though, this was the biggest one. A big part of the vibe we’ve cultivated is that there’s no point in freaking out. That’s just the Zen of touring. You can be miserable, or you can laugh it off.”
Police quickly recovered their van, but it was in a shocking state: a smashed window, catalytic converter cut out, and the ignition was, in a word, fucked. Their trailer had been emptied, too.
Luckily, things began to fall back into place as quickly as they’d fallen apart. A friend of Jackson’s was in the city working with the Cadillac racing pit crew, who offered to repair their van. Then another friend who worked for a musical equipment distributor in the state stepped in to assist. Within 24 hours, the band’s GoFundMe seeking help to replace tour essentials had reached its target.
“Bands like Billy Talent and Alexisonfire reached out and sent us money, too,” smiles Liam. “We got new merch made, drove to the next show, and showed up ready to play. Seeing so many people come through with that much love and support made us realise we couldn’t stop.”
Back in their early days, the band looked to Henry Rollins’ Black Flag-era journal Get In The Van as a bible-cum-life manual. But where the Californian punk trailblazers originally managed a decade on the road, something has compelled Cancer Bats to keep going hard after two.
Liam Cormier is full of beans. Powered by pizza slices, veggie kebabs and strong coffee, he exudes the demeanour of a punk rock party machine, despite being sober for 25 years. He attributes his clean-living lifestyle to finding his tribe when he was 21 during an extended visit to Kitchener–Waterloo, twin cities 65 miles west of Toronto.
“I just needed a change and I had met all these kids who were straight edge,” he explains. “I’d already done lots of partying and I really liked the idea of something you held yourself to forever. I wasn’t going to smoke cigarettes and I wasn’t going to drink anymore. That wasn’t the direction I wanted to go in. Everyone was super-positive and really into music. I wanted to be part of that.”
During his stay, he’d watch bands such as Buried Inside and Miles Between Us, as well as immersing himself in the skateboarding and BMX scene. He mixed with a ton of creative people – zine writers, photographers, artists. Six months later, he returned home, inspired by his visit.
He initially began playing drums for a power-violence band and would sell demos from his backpack at DIY shows. It was around this time he caught a band called At The Mercy Of Inspiration, who played what he describes as “black metal, but with emo lyrics”. He befriended their guitarist, Scott Middleton, and the pair eventually started working on ideas for a band of their own.
With Liam moving on from drums, the duo decided their band would sound like, or at least have the energy of, bands like Misfits, Black Flag, Refused, Led Zeppelin, Down and Entombed. Maybe someone mentioned cult hardcore outfit Zao. Either way, the influences were all mixed into a sludgy, punk metal soup. Christening themselves Cancer Bats, they expanded into a four-piece, joined by bassist Andrew McCracken and drummer Mike Peters in time for their 2006 debut, Birthing The Giant, and played whenever and wherever they could.
“Toronto had such an awesome scene,” remembers Liam. “In the suburbs, people would rent out pool halls or literally anywhere with floor space. People would find places and figure out how to put a show on. We played lots of those and, as much as you’d play in the city, it felt like the hardcore scene was built in the suburbs with the kids.”
Fellow Canadian bands Alexisonfire, Billy Talent and Comeback Kid offered them a leg up early on, inviting the band to join them on tour across the country. Scott had a van, and, through sheer thriftiness, they’d always have enough petrol to get to the first gig.
“There were always lots of bands who didn’t have their shit together and couldn’t drop everything to go out for two weeks across the country,” explains Liam. “We could, and that was a big motivation for us. We learned a lot.”
When they weren’t on tour, Liam would think of ways to promote the band, even if it meant stuffing envelopes and waiting in line at the post office to send them.
“I was living as cheaply as possible so I could work on the band,” he admits. “Even before the Birthing The Giant record came out, I went to our record label [Distort Entertainment] every single day and asked them what I could do. I was keen to figure it all out because I really wanted this to be my life.”
Andrew eventually left to focus on his graphic design business. Enter Jaye, a kind man with ‘MAJOR RAGER’ tattooed on his hands, who possesses an utterly terrifying presence onstage. Their work ethic became even more relentless. Get in the van? They were already in it, mate.
“We were all 24 or 25 and I felt like we had to make up for lost time,” says Liam. “We had zero back-up plan and definitely had no money. We learned a lot the more we toured and just had to hustle. Later on, we’d realise these bands from California had their parents investing in the band. I like that we had to carve it all out on our own.”
That hustle paid off. After touring the absolute arse off their 2008 album, Hail Destroyer, the idea to throw a Beastie Boys cover into their set during a sweltering Japanese festival gave Cancer Bats a bigger boost than they ever dared imagine.
Their souped-up cover of Sabotage was released as an EP, then later included on their 2010 album, Bears, Mayors, Scraps and Bones. It became something of a secret weapon for the band, particularly during festival sets. Releasing a fun promo video before a run of cross-Canada hockey arena shows with Billy Talent did nothing to harm their momentum either.
The following year, Cancer Bats received an offer to play at the UK’s Sonisphere festival. They were asked if they’d consider performing a second set in the party tent after that night’s headliners had finished. The only stipulation was that it had to be covers of songs by one band. It was a no-brainer.
“Black Sabbath!” says Liam.
They were billed as Bat Sabbath, the first time they performed under that alter ego. “We assumed that everyone would know it was us, but the rumour mill started and people began saying it was going to be the Foo Fighters. The tent was packed.”
The set was a riot. Sometime between the band leaving the UK and touching down in Toronto, the footage went viral. Upon landing, their phones began to vibrate with offers for more Bat Sabbath shows.
Their profile began to grow on their own merits, too. Their fourth album, 2012’s Dead Set On Living, was bolder and more confident. They launched the album with six sweaty club shows in one day around London, plotted in the shape of a pentagram. Perhaps bands whose names began with a ‘B’, with a release titled Sabotage in their back catalogue, were proving to be a lucky omen.
“We had to meet all these expectations and it felt like Sabotage pushed us to be a bigger band,” says Liam. “It felt like a perfect storm and it was so much fun.”
Around a decade ago, Cancer Bats left Distort and signed with major label BMG. Much like The Dillinger Escape Plan a few years previously, they founded their own imprint (Noise Church, later Bat Skull Records) and kept control of their DIY operation. Crucially, it afforded them time to take a break from touring and learn to be “real people”, before working with Slipknot producer Ross Robinson on their 2015 album, Searching For Zero.
“Nu metal is just part of his story,” says Liam of Ross. “When I hear his name, I immediately think of Norma Jean, Glassjaw and The Blood Brothers. After speaking with him on the phone, I thought his vibe was awesome.”
On the label’s advice, the band spent three weeks at the producer’s Venice Beach studio, recording their parts live rather than working to a sterile click track. In the vocal booth, Liam channelled his inner Ozzy and sang some actual melodies on album number five. All eyes were on the clock – their budget did not allow for fucking about, even if they were close to the beach.
“Ross told us it was the shortest time he’s ever worked on an album,” explains Liam. “We realised it could have been so different if we could have written the record with him. We learned so much.”
While their partnership failed to yield commercial success, it was a positive experience for the band, who co-produced their follow-up with Winnipeg studio owner John Paul Peters. The Spark That Moves was nominated for Metal/Hard Music Album of the Year at the 2019 Juno Awards, the Canadian equivalent of the BRITs, but ultimately lost out to prog metal legends Voivod for The Wake.
As with every other band on the planet, the pandemic impacted Cancer Bats. Founding guitarist Scott Middleton opted to leave at the end of 2021, his place eventually taken by Jackson Landry, who quit his construction job to join the band (they recorded 2022’s Psychic Jailbreak as a three-piece, with bassist Jaye Schwarzer pulling double duty).
Four years later comes Give Me Dirt, their eighth album. Despite the bumpy roads they’ve had to navigate in recent years, they sound just as hungry as the 20-somethings who hustled their way around the Toronto DIY scene with a backpack full of cassettes. Perhaps it’s the addition of 29-year-old Jackson, who, aged nine, received his first guitar and a copy of Birthing The Giant as a gift for doing well at school. It’s a full-circle moment that is not lost on Liam,
who is technically old enough to be Jackson’s dad.
“It’s funny that he grew up learning to play guitar to our first album,” Liam laughs. “He wrote one particular riff for Give Me Dirt and we said it reminded us of old Bats, and he said, ‘Yeah, back when you were kicking ass!’”
The line-up may be as solid as a breeze block wall once again, but by Christ, Cancer Bats seem to enjoy not making things easy for themselves. Nowadays, the band are spread across three different provinces: Manitoba, Ontario and Nova Scotia. If you load up on Tim Hortons coffee, poutine and whatever else Canadians eat, and drive due west from Liam’s home in Halifax on the Atlantic coast, it would take 36 hours of continuous driving to get to Mike’s house in
rural Winnipeg. There’s no popping over for a rehearsal. It’s a mission to do absolutely anything at all.
Yet, somehow, they make it work. They have to make it work. Liam, now 46, has invested literally half of his life into Cancer Bats and can’t imagine ever stopping.
“I still have the same fire,” says Liam. “I feel thankful that I have this weird energy that hasn’t vanished, and I’m stoked I still get to do this.”
Give Me Dirt is out now via Marshall Records
