Gig review: Bat Sabbath at The Key Club

“Leeds!” screams Cancer Bats frontman Liam Cormier, fringe plastered to his face and mutton chops quivering. “I hope you have all come this evening with your dancing shoes!”

Draped in a caped cloak that follows each swish of his arm, his bug-eyed grin is both parts cartoonishly macabre and dangerously frenzied. For a band who made their name in the hardcore punk scene, there’s something fascinatingly alien about the dramaturgical flair with which the singer conducts himself.

But of course, that is the conceit. This is not Cancer Bats but their theatrically grubby alter-ego Bat Sabbath – an affectionately homaged cosplay to the fathers of heavy metal, born out of an after-party show that the Toronto-based heroes threw together during the now-defunct Sonisphere Festival at Knebworth House back in 2011.

For what may have been a spur-of-the-moment throwaway joke, it has certainly proven its legs.

Perhaps that is because this is more than mere tribute. The band – crammed together on the old-fashioned square stage of The Key Club, located beneath the city’s Merrion Centre shopping precinct – don’t seek to replicate Sabbath’s songs so much as reincarnate them in their own image.

The result is a fascinating hybrid; gilt-edged classics given a blistering makeover, the swing of Geezer Butler’sbass grooves and Tony Iommi’s razor-sharp riffs given fresh life. From the shattering barked vocals and bludgeoning pace that heralds Children of the Grave, Bat Sabbath cram as much as they can into an hour with gleeful abandon.

The group aren’t afraid to pull surprises; Paranoid and Iron Man, arguably Sabbath’s two biggest tunes, are dispatched in the first act. Cormier too hams it up at every opportunity – “I understand you are used to seeing your tribute acts while you stand still and sip your warm ales, but tonight, we crave chaos!” – though he finds himself bemused at having to issue dysentery alarms after crowd-surfers nearly wrench the plumbing off the low ceiling during N.I.B. halfway through. “Please do not hang from the s*** pipes!” he cries. “It is insane we must say this to adults!”

A finale thrash through Black Sabbath and War Pigs looks to bring the evening to close on a high, but then the group re-emerges, costumes shed and back in Cancer Bats mode for a quick burst of debut album favourite Pneumonia Hawk. Whatever farewell words Cormier has are drowned out by delirious cheers.