4. GallowsOrchestra Of Wolves
We’re going back to what we’re calling historic albums. Gallows were the outlier punk band that managed to break into the indie circle a bit, by means of NME. I don’t want to use the word ‘terrifying’, but it was hard for me to tear my eyes away from them. They were such a gang: Frank Carter was the lead singer, then there was his brother Steph, Lags, Stu and Lee Barrett. Oh God, I know all of their names!
Again, to talk about visceral records, it just fucking goes off from track one and is unrelenting until the very end. Just that raw aggression, like a dog biting down that was not gonna let go until you were out the other side of the record. It had such a huge effect on me as a late teen. ‘Abandon Ship’ used to be my MySpace profile song! I had the opportunity to photograph them at Underage Festival in London when I was probably 16 or 17 and I was so scared to shoot the pictures, because I was like, these guys are so tough! And it’s proper punk music. Frank and Steph would often end up in the crowd, playing in the middle of a circle pit, which was fucking crazy to see for the first time as a kid. Their live show definitely inspired us when I was playing in a heavier band [punk band Counterfeit] even though we didn’t sound alike.
After Gallows, Frank had another band called Pure Love who were great. But then he formed Frank Carter And The Rattlesnakes, and it reminded me of the first time that I heard Gallows – back to that real aggression and attitude. Their album Blossom was made by a guy called Tom Mitchener, who also did some additional work on [2009 Gallows album] Grey Britain. Again, I remember hearing the drums on that record, and being like, oh my God, that fucking drum sound is amazing. Where was that made? Then I found out that Tom had made it, and we ended up making our first record [Counterfeit’s 2017 debut Together We Are Stronger] with Tom. His studio was in the garden at the end of his parents’ house in Hemel Hempstead. He probably got so sick of me because I was asking so many questions about Gallows and Frank. He was probably thinking, shut up, we’re here to make your record! I should say he’s not like that at all, Tom’s a sweet, sweet guy. Sorry, Tom.
I could really talk about Gallows for hours. I remember going on tour – I can’t remember which fucking Twilight movie it was for, but it was a Twilight movie – and we did these in-store pop-ups at Hot Topic shops across the US. They had a Gallows t-shirt at this one Hot Topic and I remember begging them, being like please, please, please can I have this? And they let me take it. For anyone who lives in the UK who doesn’t know what Hot Topic is, it’s where you can go and buy all your favourite band merch and goth shit. We all had one of those shops in our towns growing up, but they were always independent. Mine was a shop called Pony Express in Guildford. All I can think about now is my studded belt. I’ll be pulling it out after this.
