Midway through their set Gallows are expending a mass of energy, attacking their instruments and jerking about like possessed men in a jam-packed venue yet, unless you are one of their devotees, moshing like Bedlam or hanging from the rafters gesticulating, it’s not especially engaging. It should be, with such energy and dynamism on show but their music attempts nothing so much as to fulfill the expectations of those who already like them, possibly in an ever-diminishing manner.
Gallows are a punk band from Watford and when they first made it big in 2007, they were a breath of fresh air, angry, tattooed, and full of spleen, ready to confront “issues” unlike the mass of indie wibblers popular at the time. Their sound drew from American hardcore and the rougher, working class, terrace anthem tail end of Seventies UK punk, but it was also defiantly their own thing.
Every song sounds like a not especially memorable fusion of the Angelic Upstarts and post-emo angst-metallers such as Bring Me The Horizon
There have been changes since, notably a year ago original singer Frank Carter, a wiry, unique presence and the brother of guitarist Steph, left the band prior to the completion of their recent eponymous third album. He was replaced by Canadian singer Wade McNeil from the now defunct band Alexisonfire. MacNeil, a stocky, bearded, heavily tattooed bloke who looks much more like a generic punk/hardcore circuit perennial than the charismatically twitchy Frank Carter, performs his role well enough but doesn’t bring any special flare or personality spark to it. Gallows once seemed to be leading an unexpected, original punk charge out of nowhere but now, with every song sounding like a not especially memorable fusion of the Angelic Upstarts and post-emo angst-metallers such as Bring Me The Horizon, they appear to have settled into a niche with a prescribed audience to match.
They have their rituals, for instance we are introduced to a mystery mosher called Gary French, and at another point they clear the mosh-pit so everyone can storm in and slam dance. “Open the floor up,” shouts MacNeil, “I want to turn this into a prison riot.” The primarily male and tattooed crowd oblige. He also, roars jovially that we are “just a bunch of seaside motherfuckers,” a theme he returns to throughout.
The band begin with an old song, “Misery” and spend much of the set flecked with strobe-light. There are also regular incursions into the crowd, the skinhead bassist flinging himself backwards with his instrument and for the last song, a purposefully chaotic “My Name Is Casanova”, MacNeil does too. They dip regularly into their new album with songs such as “Outsider Art” and “Victim Culture” (I think!) but most of the numbers disappear in an anonymous melee of roar’n’thrash, all energy, little individuality, preaching to the converted. Gallows once had everyone waiting to see where they would go, whether, like the best Seventies punk acts, such as their heroes, The Ruts, they’d push at musical boundaries while sticking the requisite two fingers up to the powers that be. Judging from this extremely lively but predictable hour long set, that is no longer their game.
Watch the video for "Outsider Art"
