Cancer Bats: ‘At The Same Time, You Kind Of Just Want To Play The Barfly!”

Cancer Bats will play a mammoth six shows in one day tomorrow (21st April), stopping at venues such as the Camden Barfly, Notting Hill Arts Club and The Old Blue Last all in twenty four hours.

Amazed? Bemused? Wondering why? DIY caught up with frontman Liam Cormier to find out how it all came about, and how he’s feeling about it.

‘I’m super stoked! We’re getting to play a lot of places that we haven’t played before. That was the whole idea, of how do we play all of these rad venues, that we love playing and want to go back to, but you realise that there’s a lot of people that like your band. You never want to leave anyone out in the cold. but at the same time, you kind of just want to play the Barfly!’

‘The exclusivity of it isn’t what we like, but it’s the intimate environment. So, we thought, we could do five of these venues, and that’d be as many people as last time, which is perfect.’

And who came up with the idea to play all six of the sets? ‘Our booking agent is who we have to give all of the credit to,’ the vocalist continues. ‘The original discussion was of, how do we play all of these shows? We’ve done a couple of shows in one day, so he was like, ‘You should play six shows in one day and put it in the shape of a Pentagram.’ We were just like, ‘This is the best!”

But with six shows in a day, there’s inevitably going to be an early wake up call. What’s it going to be like for the band to play at 11.30am? ‘We’ve done it before! We’re not any strangers to doing crazy shit. Last year, when we played Hit The Deck festival, we also played a festival in France, jumped on a plane, played a matinee and then played Hit The Deck. So, that was three shows in twenty four hours over two countries. we tried to sleep somewhere in between… ‘

Cancer Bats will appear at the following venues all over London tomorrow (Saturday 21st April).

11:30 The Old Blue Last
14:00 Notting Hill Arts Club
16:30 The Garage (Upstairs)
19:00 Brixton Windmill
21:30 Barfly
00:00 The Old Blue Last

For anyone who can’t make the shows - which sold out in mere minutes - the band’s UK label Hassle Records have set up a special website, where fans can follow the progress of the Pentagram tour, and get involved in proceedings.