Gallows - Part 2
The Hangmen Cometh
One of the nearly insightful things to plop from Johnny Rotten’s mouth was the nugget ‘Anger is an energy’. Gallows have both, fuelling their indictments of a grim country: one of cynical Monkey Dust abandon, populated by politicians as grey as John Major’s ‘Spitting Image’ caricature, and lost sheep herded towards spiritual Armageddon by an overly materialist middle way.
“The UK never really has any sunshine and it never really has any harsh winter, it’s just very grey. It’s the grey country, and it’s hard for people.
“It’s comfortable to be born here, grow up here and live, work and die here,” says Carter, the self-determination in his voice drifting into mourning. “Whatever you’re given you accept and swallow - you don’t strive for anything else. I really think that’s the mainstream view. That’s how I think most mainstream people view England.”
Carter once lived in Slough, perfectly named for a place he considered to be one of the worst towns in Britain. What then, is England? “Gallows England - three words: it’s grey, it’s almost defeated - but it’s responsive. Nearly defeated but responsive; people are reacting to this injection and everyone’s excited about what’s going on. They need to grab what’s happening, enjoy it and accept it. And that should become the norm. I’m not talking revolution. It doesn’t need to be a great change, just a number of small ones, and that can be the future.”
The future for Gallows lies in the flammable atmosphere of their live shows. Nitrous bombs of frenzied energy and confrontation, the band lurch like lions in feeding heat, predatory, confronting audiences with a howling, lupine wake-up call.
Screaming lyrics like “We don’t fuck about/Say what we think”, “Mayday, Mayday/Man overboard again” and “Pour some petrol through your letterbox” help to demolish the boundaries between band and audience and allows Frank, one year older than guitar-playing brother and bandmate Steph, to live up to his name. The direct delivery is also something Carter believes helps his band connect with the spirit of a bygone age.
“Bring it all back, break it down to what it was many many years ago, right at the inception of it all, when it was just about the music,” he states, hoping to continue the live ethos and agenda of bands that truly mattered. “It was about sharing this love for your bad situation, making positivity out of the negativity around you, and having a shout about it - but being safe in it. I hope that’s what we’re doing, but time will tell.”
The shows are intense, full-proof evidence of a band not groping after the commercial success that will duly come their way, but doing it out of necessity. It’s obvious, though, from the liner notes of ‘Orchestra Of Wolves’ it hasn’t all been love and unity. Gallows have been burned. They know how vicious can people can be, and how the media can occasionally get it wrong.
“Right now it’s frustrating. The media is painting us as bruisers out for trouble and starting fights but that’s not the way it is. The only conflict we’ve ever had was where kids would come to our shows who didn’t belong at gigs, you know? They knew they didn’t belong, they like raving, getting pilled up, and binge drinking at the weekends. They’re in unfortunate jobs and they’re stuck there.”
“It’s not their fault, y’know? It really isn’t - they’ve got nothing better,” he says of the disenfranchised youth. “They see a bunch of kids with a scene that’s thriving, so they instantly say ‘we want what they’ve got, and if we can’t have it, we’ll take it away so that they feel like we do’. It’s not their fault.
“I’d hope that the press we’ve been given, might make people realise, ‘well, actually, all the music I’ve been fed is bullshit. It’s got no point, no sense of direction, no real bollocks, no backing, no lasting power, and there’s no fire there’. Not anger necessarily, but you need something. You need to light the fire around people’s feet and watch them move, quick.”
This Feature Originally Appeared In AU Issue 37
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