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Review |
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The Gallows hit the music scene in 2006 when they
released their debut album ‘Orchestra Of Wolves’
on In at The Deep End Records and ever since then
the band’s profile grew at such a rapid rate
thanks to their well known and loved hectic live
shows where pretty much anything could happen, as
soon as Frank Carter and the boys took to the stage
madness happened as the Gallows gave 110% at each
and every show.
In July 2007 the Gallows got signed to a major
record label Warner Brother Records who went on
to re-release ‘Orchestra Of Wolves’
with a bonus CD of live and rare tracks and since
signing for Warner brothers the Gallows have toured
across the UK on various occasions, smashing up
venues on their travels, they have toured pretty
much all across the world including a massive
stint on the Vans Warped Tour, they also got banned
from playing the Disney owned venue the House
OF Blues due to their explicit lyrical content,
they have also played pretty much every major
festival across the world, with one of the highlights
with Frank Carter being tattooed live on stage
at Reading Festival, the band have also be featured
on the cover of many major magazine publications,
in fact there has been no escaping the Gallows
in the last couple of years.
It’s been long coming but the second full
length Gallows album is finally here ‘Grey
Britain’ is the albums name and it’s
a concept album about how as a country Britain
is pretty much fucked, a week or so before the
album was released, the Gallows put the whole
album up for streaming on their MySpace site,
I headed over and gave it a listen and after one
listen I felt very disappointed, the album didn’t
sound as angry as the previous Gallows album and
the production sounding to crystal clear for my
liking but since getting the album and playing
it a few times over on a decent stereo extremely
loud my mind has changed and I think ‘Grey
Britain’ fucking rocks.
‘Grey Britain’ starts off with ‘The
Riverbank’ the track is a short introduction,
it’s come across sounding like the kind
of music you would hear during a really dark old
skool horror film, with various screams and water
sounds in the background which quickly fade away
as the guitar riffs and Frank Carter’s raw
vocals come in.
‘London Is The Reason’ is the first
real strong sounding song on the album it has
that classic Gallows punch that mixes good melody
and instrumental work with real raw sounding vocals,
it features a couple of classic breakdowns where
the guitar riffs take a turn for the unexpected,
before the song returns to the powerful chant-along
chorus that’s going to grow to be a fan
favourite.
‘Leeches’ is amazing from start to
finish; the song features really strong sounding
group chant-along vocals and also features another
set of super charged guitar riffs that you just
can’t ignore.
‘Black Eyes’ reminds me very much
of a song from the debut Gallows album with the
only difference being that the guitar riffs are
much heavier and chunkier sounding but still managing
to come across pretty clean at the same time,
this is another song that’s guaranteed to
become a fan favourite.
The song that sticks out the most to be on Grey
Britain’ is ‘Death Voices’ and
its mainly due to the way that Frank’s vocals
come across in the song, they are so powerful
sounding and the moment when the instrument work
stops and Frank Carter chants along “Four
nails, four corners, four riders, four horses,
four tales, death voices, no love, all corpses,
throw your fists into the ground” and then
the guitars kick back in like they never stopped
is fucking epic and without a doubt one of the
best musical moments that the Gallows have ever
created.
‘The Vulture (Acts 1 And 2)’ is actually
the lead single from the album and is so different
from anything the Gallows have ever done mainly
for the fact that Act 1 is an acoustic track and
the Gallows manage to create a acoustic track
well and make it work it’s quite dark sounding
and the cross over moment from Act 1 to Act 2
is pretty epic with its Metallica style guitar,
when Act 2 fully kicks in it ends up being a really
fast flowing hectic song where Franks vocals are
loud and clear with proper thunderous drum beats
and kicking guitar riffs.
The guitar riffs during ‘The Riverbed’
are enough to excite the biggest guitar nerds,
‘The Great Forgiver’ features Frank
shouting his mouth off from start to finish, ‘Graves’
stands out slightly because it features Simon
Neil from Biffy Clyro on guest vocals, and as
for ‘Misery’ and ‘Crucifucks’
both songs are epic in their own way and in some
ways it feels like the Gallows have left the best
till last.
In places the album comes across extremely dark
and spooky sounding, the guitars riffs are much
heavier than they were on the debut Gallows album
but this time around the production is proper crystal
clear and spot on so the riffs and everything don’t
have the raw jagged edge that they did on 'Orchestra
OF Wolves', but that’s what happens when you
sign to a major label and have to please the bosses,
luckily for the Gallows they have had pretty much
complete control of the album and it is only the
production that does sound that little to perfect,
the offensive lyrical content is still there, Franks
vocals are still as gruff as ever and the inclusion
of an orchestra gives the album a real epic movie
feel.
It’s always difficult making your second
album when your first album has been so successful,
look at The Darkness for example the first album
made them and their second album broke them and
this has happened to so many bands in the past
but luckily for the Gallows they have come up
with the goods with ‘Grey Britain’
and are currently doing so much better than they
ever expected with ‘Grey Britain’
charting at number 20 of the UK album chart after
the first week of release the only way I see things
going wrong for the Gallows is if Frank Carter
decides that he can’t cope with how popular
the band have got and quits and to be fair anything
can happen with Frank Carter as he has threatened
to leave the band on a number of occasions but
let’s just hope he loves being back out
on the road tearing up venues with a whole list
of new songs.
5/5
Review by Trigger
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| Band
Members |
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Frank Carter (vocals)
Laurent Barnard (guitars, keys, vocals)
Steph Carter (guitars, vocals)
Stu Gili-Ross (bass)
Lee Barratt (drums) |
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| Track
Listing |
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1. The Riverbank
2. London Is The Reason
3. Leeches
4. Black Eyes
5. I Dread The Night
6. Death Voices
7. The Vulture (Acts I & II)
8. The Riverbed
9. The Great Forgiver
10. Graves
11. Queensberry Rules
12. Misery
13. Crucifucks |
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| Band
Related Links |
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| Review
Score Code |
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- Top Cheese
- Brilliant
- Pretty damn good
- Ok I guess
-
What Was That? |
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