Cancer Bats live at Soo Blaster in Sault Ste. Marie, 12 September 2019

A seven-inch record came out on Wednesday, 11 September 2019, and the tour that promoted it began the following night. Cancer Bats and Single Mothers had swapped songs for New Damage Switcheroo Vol. 1. Cancer Bats ran two Single Mothers songs, “Dog Parks” and “Switchoff”, into one track, and Single Mothers took on the Cancer Bats song “Road Sick”, first released in 2012.

Sault Ste. Marie was the opening date, at Soo Blaster on Thursday, 12 September. Loffredo & Associates presented it with H.I.T Management, doors were at 8:30 p.m., the event was 19+ with photo ID required, and advance tickets were $20 plus a service fee.

The swap, and where it came from

The Switcheroo idea was borrowed. Dine Alone Records had run its own Switcheroo series, which paired Alexisonfire with Moneen, and New Damage Records reused the format for Cancer Bats and Single Mothers. Two of the bands on the record were also two of the bands on the bill, so the songs and the shows pointed at each other.

Cancer Bats formed in Toronto in 2004 around the singer Liam Cormier, so Sault Ste. Marie found a band fifteen years into its life. Its albums ran from Birthing the Giant in 2006 to Searching for Zero, released by Metal Blade Records in March 2015.

The most recent, The Spark That Moves, appeared on 20 April 2018 through New Damage Records and the band’s own Bat Skull Records. The split therefore arrived as a small, fast release rather than a new album cycle, and it gave the first night something to point at.

What the door asked for

The event was 19+, which is the legal drinking age in Ontario, and photo ID was required from everyone. Tickets were sold in advance through the promoter’s online shop, and TicketScene took Visa, Visa Debit and MasterCard. There was no second tier.

A bill built from three places

Single Mothers and Sharptooth were billed as special guests, and a local band, Redundant, was added for Sault Ste. Marie. Single Mothers formed in London, Ontario, in 2008 around Andrew Thomson. By 2019 they had made three albums for Dine Alone, the latest Through a Wall in 2018, and released two singles that year, “Metropolis” and “Nihilist Headlights”.

Sharptooth came from Baltimore, Maryland, and formed there in 2013. Its first full album, Clever Girl, appeared in 2017 on Pure Noise Records, which had signed the band that May, and the Sault Ste. Marie night came about two years after it.

In September 2019 the band returned to Canada for this run, which put a Baltimore hardcore band on a bill between two Ontario acts. The three touring groups had one thing in common on paper: each had a record from 2017 or later behind it.

Fifteen nights across the country

The tour ran to 15 dates between 12 and 28 September. After Thunder Bay came Winnipeg on the 14th, at the Park Theatre as part of the SOS Festival, then Regina, Saskatoon, Fort McMurray and Grande Prairie. The west coast followed with Vancouver, Victoria and Whistler, and the interior with Kelowna and Rossland.

Red Deer, Edmonton and Calgary closed it on the 26th, 27th and 28th. Beginning in Northern Ontario meant the whole country lay ahead of the van, and ending at the Gateway on the SAIT campus in Calgary meant a tour that started in a sports bar finished at a college hall.

The room

Soo Blaster is at 345 Queen Street East. It describes itself as a restaurant, a sports bar with a stage area and a gaming centre with pool tables, darts, arcade games and virtual reality rooms. A hardcore tour opened in a building with a whole second life as a place to eat and play.

Bobaflex had played the same stage on Tuesday, 10 September, at the same $20. The tour’s second night, at Crocks at NV in Thunder Bay, shared the bill and the price but not the room. How many people came to Queen Street that Thursday is not a number anyone recorded.