When Gallows had a change of frontmen in 2011, it was like a transfer for a big European football club. Out went founding vocalist Frank Carter and in came Wade MacNeil, straight from the collapse of Canada’s biggest punk-band Alexisonfire. Since then, everyone else has got on with life: George Pettit became a fireman; Dallas Green makes oodles of money with City & Colour; and Wade and Gallows have made two albums together. And if you care, yes, my personal scars have healed since that traumatic event. It was tough going for the first few months but I told my mum about it and she pulled me up and dusted me off.
The Wade MacNeil era of UK punk outfit Gallows continues. With the release of Desolation Sounds looming, the band’s initial singles signal a broodier band that are testing some milder waters.
Their first album with Wade, and third overall, Gallows, came out in 2012 and was received quite warmly. MacNeil turned out to fit the Frank Carter-shaped hole rather snugly, retaining the spitting, greasy, knuckle-tattoo punk grit of the former throatman’s vocals. However, MacNeil doesn’t offer the conspicuous Cockney rasp of Carter that washed Gallows’ hardcore in a very English stain. On the other hand, the Watford-sourced band’s new found worldliness blew up their artistic scope enormously. Songs like Victim Culture and Last June (about riots in Toronto) probably wouldn’t have happened without MacNeil.
This year, the band plan on releasing their second album featuring their imported Canadian throat. Titled Desolation Sounds, it will also be their first album without long-time guitarist Steph Carter, brother of Frank. In anticipation, the band has released three songs. I’m unsure whether to call them ‘singles’, but two of them, Chains and Bonfire Season, have music videos, and the third song (Leather Crown) has only been released in audio form. The massive indication these three songs give is that Desolation Sounds will be a massive stretch of Gallows’ sounds – at both ends.
There’s a new metallic grime added to the band’s traditional punk and hardcore base that at times pushes the band’s sound right to the edge of doom and black metal, sans that genre’s idiosyncratic scrotumless, piercing screams. The addition of symphonic arrangements and the ever-present bleak aesthetics furthers this impression.
On the other hand, Gallows explores softer, rock-focussed realisations. Punk music is defined by its short and intense nature, and whilst I should add that the band never fully strays from their roots in any of these songs, large parts of the new tracks linger and wander into milder waters. It’s funny, the band dropped Frank because the former front man wanted the band to go in a “straight-up rock” direction, and these three songs resemble that idea in a brooding and cynical spirit.
I think I’m right in saying Chains was released as a stand-alone single back in 2014, but it is also set to appear on the new album as the fourth track. The song initially cranks along slowly, a slow, lone-guitar plucking towards full exposure, aided by soft, disparate female vocals (courtesy of guitarist Lags Barnard’s missus). A minute and a bit in, we get what we’ve been waiting for. Or not. A slow metal riff suddenly appears, whose droning doom which would actually aptly suit as the leitmotif for the 28 Months Later (hurry up and make that bloody film Danny Boyle you lazy bastard!) The song continues to flick in between sections of this soft guitar/female vocal part and the heavy riffing for the rest of the 4-minute length. For fans of the band’s traditional sound, something like Chains would be a massive disappointment. I don’t count myself in that group, but personally otherwise, I felt the song was a bit boring. Slow riffs have to be either thick and destructive, or build up slowly to a rather craggy peak. Chains does neither, and as such comes across as grating.
As opposed to Chains’ video’s consistent lack of colour pallette, Bonfire Season introduces a nice reprieve of colour. Unfortunately, the music video is rather bohemian and gothic. Fortunately though, they chose to cast a girl with a nice bum as the dominatrix, which means 3 thumbs up from me. (Tee hee!) Bonfire Season contains neither hardcore nor metal influences in any part of the song, unlike Chains or Leather Crown. Rather, it sounds like a typical slow-burning power ballad planted to temper an album’s top end. In fact, there’s nothing really Gallows about this song. It sounds a like a song Wade/Alexisonfire would write and then give to Dallas Green, whose croon would shoot it into the stratosphere. To be completely honest, it makes me want to listen to the similar yet far more complete The Northern.
Leather Crown is their third offering from their upcoming album – and to be frank, if you haven’t enjoyed the new(ish) sound of their other tracks, than this one isn’t going to be doing much placating. There’s a slow start in this song too; slow starts are unfortunately beginning to appear as a trope in Gallows’ songwriting. Like Chains too, it flicks in between sobriety and thick riffage, but this time hardcore is involved. You can pop those corks. Out of the four minutes of this songs there’s approximately two and half minutes of blitzy punk rock. For the remaining ninety seconds, rather oddly there’s the same sombre sections that sound halfway to doom metal. Add to that the black and white Ophelia imagery of the album cover, and you can’t help but feel that the band’s been hanging out with the goth kids in the off-time between album cycles.
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