Cancer Bats / Bleed From Within / Underside

Cambridge Junction, 7.2.19

Cambridge has never been a city that was that fond of metal and hardcore punk, which is why the announcement of this show was a surprise. Really heavy bands coming to Cambridge are few and far between which makes this show as punk as it gets. Cancer Bats are taking hardcore punk where no hard core punk band has ever gone before, quite
literally.


Show openers Underside came all the way from Nepal for this tour, and despite knowing very little about them before hand they were really fun and I’ll be checking them out at Download this summer for sure.

Bleed From Within were main support tonight. While their riffs were crushingly heavy, they were rather generic and used metalcore clichés. Choreographed hair spinning and shouting “this is your last f*cking chance to mosh” created an enjoyable but unoriginal performance.


Despite ticket sales of maybe 200 or so, Cancer Bats put on a show and a half. Blasting through fast-paced bangers one after another with no time to breath in between, the Junction felt like a New York basement punk gig just with a barrier.


Vocalist Liam Cormier brought more energy to the show than a solar panel in a desert
could produce. He threw himself around like a one man mosh pit on that stage. If there
was a how to guide on being frontman, it would be to see Cormier live.


The crowd were all up for it too, head banging all night. I even got punched in the lip, but it was worth it; Cancer Bats could cause carnage for a 1 person or 1000 person crowd.

My only complaint is that this show would have felt much more at home in the smaller
Portland Arms where everyone would have been packed in tighter and so much sweatier.


Overall this was an excellently put together high energy punk rock show, just in a room a
bit too big.

Ryan Bird

Thanks to Emma Van Duyts at Public City PR for sorting things out