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Live Reviews
Live Review: Cancer Bats at Electric Ballroom in London on 29 Oct
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 15 November 2010
There’s that feeling – the feeling of the floor rumbling, right beneath your feet, vibrating against the soles of your shoes – that tells you that things are about to get VERY LOUD. “It’s all about you” is pretty much the number one message that’s hammered into us between every song break; clearly Cancer Bats frontman Liam Cormier is right, because all the songs we could want are including in the set, from fan-favourites to not-quite-forgotten old favourites.
“They’re called Cancer Bats? Sounds like something from ‘Nathan Barley'”, a friend uttered a little derisively when I told them I was going to this gig. Hardly. What makes the Cancer Bats the Cancer Bats is that they make no effort to pander to the cool crowd with a fancy show.
It’s back to basics, the way that gigs were intended; it’s getting sweaty and allowing people to crowd-surf until their shoes fall off, it’s the frontman being groped by the crowd as he leaves the stage, it’s making sure that everyone has left the room with an ear infection and sore sore arms from holding them up too high for too long. It’s loud guitars and a singer with passion in his eyes and his gut.
Between the excellent Beastie Boys cover ‘Sabotage’ and oldies from ‘Birthing The Giant’ – plus a few songs that have only been played to two or three crowds previously – the Bats positively blew my socks off. And that’s pretty amazing if you ask me, because I wasn’t even wearing any. TW
