Exclusive Gallows Interview

Gallows talk. Rock Sound listens. Click to read.

Posted Wednesday, 7 January 2009 in

Exclusive Gallows Interview Gallows grace the cover of Rock Sound Issue 118, check out some bonus Q&A from the exclusive interview with the band below:

How does the new album compare to your debut ‘Orchestra Of Wolves’?
Frank Carter (vocals): ''I think people are going to be really, really excited when they hear our new album, because it’s heavy as fuck, man – there’s completely no compromise. It’s no-holds-barred basically. We just took all the best parts of Gallows and amplified and just made it even more vicious.

It’s disgusting, it’s really, really nasty – I fucking love it. I’m really, really proud of it, ’cos I think everyone’s expecting us to go the other way, pull a Good Charlotte, and come out with something really, really easy to digest – like, ‘Bad Boys of Punk Go Pop’ or whatever.''

You’ve been diagnosed as suffering with severe acid reflux, which has slowed down the recording process; are you concerned that will affect your touring plans?
Frank: ''Nah, ’cos touring is totally different, I mean a) I don’t really have to fucking do much anymore, I’ve got used to spreading the vocals quite thin. And I don’t really get that stressed about touring, I don’t even get that tired from touring to be honest. We’ve done it so much. In 18 months we did such an intense schedule that we’re like a weathered, veteran band now. Before that we’ve all been in bands that have toured a lot anyway, you know?

We’ve all paid our dues. The things that stress me out are like press, no offence – that sort of shit that you have to accommodate and you’ve gotta make work. You’ve always gotta be careful about how you’re perceived and what you say – that’s what stresses me out. But we’re going to do things differently this time around and actually do a lump of press before we go out, so that when we’re on the road we’re literally on the road, focused, and don’t have to worry about putting our foot in it and just play.''

Laurent has said to Rock Sound before that the constant interviews can be a pain, that’s fair enough…
Laurent Barnard (guitar): ''You go to a new city, you wanna see that place, you wanna feel like you’ve experienced something there, not be sat in a dressing room on the phone answering the same questions, like, all the time.''

Frank: ''Everyone thinks they’ve got a new, exciting question for you and it’s like, ‘You haven’t. This is the fifth time I’ve had to answer it today’. Then you start, because you’ve answered the same questions so much, getting bored of the answers. Then that really frustrates me, because the answer’s still fucking poignant, but I feel like I’m not getting my point across almost. Then you wait until two months later when the magazines come out and you’re like, ‘Fuck, I’m so glad I held it down’, because the message is the same across the board.''

Was it a bit of a culture shock working with Garth Richardson as producer?
Stu Gili-Ross: ''No it was cool, he’s a well known producer, he’s done a lot of really big records, but he came down to where we were practicing at the time, at our friend’s house, who’s got a studio in a converted garage at the end of his garden, and he worked with us there for like a week solid on the tracks that we’d demoed and stuff.

It was so funny, ’cos he walked in and he’s a fucking super-producer and he was like, ‘Right, where’s the internet?’ And everyone’s like, ‘There’s no internet here, it’s a garden shed’. But yeah, he was cool, quite easy to work with. He was really approachable, he’d come out and hang out with us when we had parties at the studio and stuff.''

Steph Carter (guitar): ''The only thing that was hard to work with was getting used to working at his speed, ’cos the way we’ve done things before, we’ve never worked with a producer, we’ve just been like, ‘Right, let’s spend as little time here as we possibly can, as little money, and go’.''

Frank: ''The thing is, you don’t think it matters and then you start listening to it and you’re just like, ‘Fuck, this is so important, everything we’re doing, every sound’. We tried to make a record that sounds really fucking disgusting and it really does. In doing that we all had to step up in actually playing our instruments – and Garth had to push himself even further, ’cos normally, kids go to him because of who he is and he’ll make it sound polished and clean, and you’ll get your cookie-cutter record that sounds fucking perfect.

But we were like, ‘Look, you have to understand that everything on the album, all the sounds have to be real, they’ve gotta be original’. There’s a choir on there, there’s piano, everything is played, everything is real. I think that he had to do more work with us than he’d had to do in a while, and we like that, you know? I liked stressing him out a bit.''