Taste Test: Cancer Bats' Liam Cormier

2 May 2012 | 9:15 am | Stephanie Liew

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THE FIRST ALBUM I BOUGHT WITH MY OWN MONEY
I remember getting Black Sabbath's Paranoid, and I remember buying AC/DC Live, which was a double cassette. I think those were some of the first ones I bought. I was so stoked. I remember the AC/DC Live record starts with Thunderstruck and I remember just being so psyched as a kid, putting that cassette on and just jamming out to it so hard. And then listening to Black Sabbath and reading comic books and just being like, “This is the best!”

THE ALBUM I'M LOVING RIGHT NOW
I'm really psyched on the new Ceremony record; that's the last record I picked up. And also I just bought the new Black Lips album, which is like crushing my life, it is so good.

MY FAVOURITE PARTY ALBUM
Recently we've been putting on a lot of Nicki Minaj, having a party jam. We're on tour right now with a friend of ours who's a DJ, so he has all this amazing Top 40 hip hop. So we'll put on, like, Die Antwoord, Nicki Minaj and Azealia Banks to just party to on our drive.

MY FAVOURITE COMEDOWN ALBUM
We listen to a lot of Ladyhawk, like the Canadian Ladyhawk without an E. The new Feist, I've been really liking that Metals album, which is really chill.

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THE MOST SURPRISING RECORD IN MY COLLECTION
I think a lot of people are really tripped out by the fact that I listen to indie rock. Like, the fact that I like Fleet Foxes has thrown a lot of people for a loop. So people seeing a Le Tigre record or a bunch of indie rock would be like, “What's this?!” which I think is funny because I just listen to tons of different stuff I guess to survive. People are also surprised that I know a lot about hip hop.

THE FIRST GIG I EVER ATTENDED
The first show I ever went to by myself, I remember buying a ticket to go see a bunch of Canadian indie rock bands. There was 13 Engines and a band called Slowburn opened. I was 11 years old and I got dropped off by my parents and I went to this bar by myself. The bartender and everyone let me in because it looked like I was eight years old and obviously there was no way I was gonna get served at a bar and nor did I want to get served, I just wanted to watch these bands. So it kind of became this thing where I could go to this bar when I was really young and nobody cared because I looked like a baby! It was this weird loophole. Weirdly enough, I didn't think it was a big deal that I was in a bar and neither did my parents because they knew I wasn't gonna get drunk, so they were like, “We'll just pick you up at ten o'clock,” or whatever.

THE WEIRDEST GIG EXPERIENCE I'VE EVER HAD
I remember one time playing really far East Coast Canada, we played this city called Sydney and there was like – I don't know how they got all these drugs – but there were all these kids that were high on ecstasy at the show. There were all these really young kids tripping hard on ecstasy while we played, so they were all like gnawing their faces off, with bug-eyes. We were literally in the middle of nowhere, we were so far from civilisation, and we're just surrounded by kids high on drugs in this weird coast town. The kids were going nuts – I don't know if they were going nuts for our band or because they were on drugs or both – but I remember just being like, “This is so weird.”

MY BIGGEST NON-MUSICAL INFLUENCES
Skateboarding. I think that has a huge effect on anyone growing up. That whole lifestyle and mentality, it just makes you look at the entire world differently. I think it's something that is very personal but also has a community to it, and it is very DIY in the same way that in a punk band, you do whatever you can to make it work. Skateboarding was the same; in Canada, we didn't have a lot of skate parks so we built our own ramps. It's kind of the same mentality when it comes to being in a band.

THE COOLEST PERSON I'VE EVER MET
Meeting Joey [Cape] from Lagwagon, it was a huge deal, but it wasn't a huge deal. Meeting somebody like that, or anyone – like Lou [Koller] from Sick Of It All, the guys form Blood For Blood, Billy [Graziadei] from Biohazard, it's just like… when you've been in these situations to meet these bands that I looked up to as a kid and were hugely influential – any of these bands that I've met that had such an impact on my life and are all legitimately rad dudes has made it so much more amazing that those are the bands that I was influenced by. I've been super lucky that my childhood idols haven't, like, told me to fuck off when I met them later on! Now I will see them and they'll be like, “Hey, what's up, man!” They're just the most normal, amazing, passionate people and it's like, this is exactly what 17 year old me thought you would be like. I almost don't want to meet other heroes of mine because I've had such a positive reinforcement with this group!

THE BIGGEST CELEBRITY CRUSH I'VE HAD
Probably Drew Barrymore. I'm 32, so in my generation, Drew Barrymore was on the cover of YM and she was such a babe. And now I don't really have a crush on her but I'd like to think that she's still a super-cool woman, like, I'd really like to meet her. It's less of a crush, like “I'm really attracted to you,” it's more like, “You seem really rad!”

IF I COULD HANG OUT IN ANY TIME AND PLACE IN HISTORY
I think it would be cool to go way back, you know, like, to see what the Renaissance was like. Something that I have no reference to, to be in the middle of France during the Renaissance and be like, “This is insane.” It would be cool to see some really weird points in history that make no sense to us in this day and age.

IF I WASN'T MAKING MUSIC
If I couldn't make music, like if I lost my voice and my hands and my feet couldn't play drums, I would definitely still be within the industry. I'd love to work for a record label or help out managing bands and stuff like that. If there's a point where I can't tour anymore, that's definitely what I want to get into, because I love this community and I love being a part of it, so that's definitely where I'd see my future.