Cancer Bats, Ignite, und Knives (UK)

2004, the year that one of Canada’s finest exports was born (and no I’m not talking about Bieber!), Cancer Bats. Fronted by vocalist Liam Cromier, this metalcore four piece have often been compared to early Converge, Hatebreed and Refused. As part of the campaign for the 4th album, Dead Set On Living – the band announced a string of shows, but this was no ordinary tour. They would play 6 shows in 5 different venues around London (travelling in path of a pentagram) in 1 day. Utter madness, but a stroke of genius at that. It saw the band using public transport to get to the venues whilst their backline were transported by vehicle. Despite the theoretical logistical chaos, Cancer Bats went above and beyond maintaining the energy levels throughout, giving the fans an admirable display of carnage and showing no signs of tiredness. With their individualistic style on their cover of Beastie Boys classic “Sabotage”, Cancer Bats make it their own whilst still remaining true to the original. Tracks such as “Hail Destroyer”, “Lucifer’s Rocking Chair” and “PMA til I’m DOA” create a storm with Cormier jumping around the stage and head-banging and enthusing the crowd to take part in mosh pits appearing left, right and centre. Playing festivals such as Taste of Chaos, Hellfest and Download, Cancer Bats put 100% into each and every show creating a spectacular energy fuelled performance. If you came to party, Cancer Bats will show you one hell of a time.

When artists fuse genres to create new and exciting music, it’s a demonstration of great skill and talent, and Ignite’s creating of their melodic hardcore music is something that I thoroughly enjoy, and has now become a mainstream genre. I’ve seen them perform countless times over the years, and they always put on a great show: they’re performance dedication and technique is of incredibly high standards, and they give every performance 110%, which is always completely contagious to the audience, who dance and sing along from start to finish.

They opened the show with their track Ash Return from back in the day, and had everyone singing along right from the outset. Their skills on their respective instruments are incredible, and some of the solos that they performed totally blew me away. Nik hill played an awesome solo, whilst Zoltan Teglas sang some incredibly high notes over the top, causing the audience to go crazy. It’s great that they put different spins on their music from the recordings, giving everyone something to really get excited about at their shows. Although their line up has altered considerably over the years, the band are all tight together, and you really wouldn’t know that they weren’t the original group.