Cancer Bats: “IDLES are basically the biggest hardcore band on the planet”

nme.com:

Cancer Bats have spoken to NME about their love for IDLES – as well how mindfulness shaped their “heavy as fuck” new album ‘Psychic Jailbreak’, and the return of their Black Sabbath-inspired side project Bat Sabbath.Formed in Toronto in 2004 by vocalist Liam Cormier and guitarist Scott Middleton, the hardcore band were soon rounded out by drummer Mike Peters and drummer Jaye R.

Schwarzer. Last year, Middleton announced he was leaving the band, telling fans: “After recent life events, now more than ever it feels the time is right for me to prioritise my family, personal growth/health.”“It was the most Canadian of splits,” Cormier told NME, before revealing he had spoken to Middleton on the previous day. “There was no real drama, that’s just not what we do,” he explained.His decision didn’t derail the creation of new album ‘Psychic Jailbreak’ (which was already 70 per cent complete), nor did it make Cormier question his own future with the group. “I was having a blast, as were the other guys, so we just carried on.” he said. “We were feeling more creative than we’d felt in a while, probably because we had so much free time.” Thanks to COVID, Cormier was spending his days skateboarding or dirt-biking around the Nova Scotian landscape he now calls home. “Making this record was just another fun thing to do,” he continued. “That being said, we knew we needed to make this a sick Cancer Bats record.

I didn’t want people to hear it, then worry about what’s happening in the Bats camp, or what we’re going to do moving forward.

It needed to be a statement.”He added: “We weren’t thinking about making a rock opera, we weren’t concerned about thinking outside the box, we just wanted to hammer home what we love about Cancer Bats.”During.