GALLOWS - Gallows

The risk, after the departure of the charismatic ginger-haired Frank Carter in August 2011, was that we'd find them turning into Green Day, breaking out the acoustic guitarlets, just to avoid losing ground in the shaky new punk scene. And therefore fans, and therefore money. But you should never underestimate the transitive property of rock. In other words, since Frank Carter was the first to think of doing the very same thing for his solo career with Pure Love, we can conclude that, chart-hungry ambitions being equal, we ended up with yet another "bad" Gallows record instead.

This is the English band's third self-titled album, a pleasant thirty-two-minute record without a single song topping two hundred and forty seconds. Alternative core, hardcore 2.0, NME punk: since we're in 2012, call it whatever you like. Gallows have a stratospheric breakthrough behind them, one that took their name to unthinkable places (like the capital's lesbian community), and when their singer was voted the "coolest" musician of 2007, ahead of the usual Pete Doherty and Liam Gallagher, they didn't bat an eyelid. Gallows, after all, and from the right perspective, were never Black Flag.

That's why "Gallows" is an up-and-down album, and it's no surprise that it is. Produced and mixed by Thomas Mitchener and Steve Sears (Nevermore, The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster, Spycatcher) in a studio once frequented by both Mortiis and Lostprophets, it takes off – so to speak – after a minute of spoken word delivered by some unspecified young woman. The fractured hardcore punk is all there, but it's impossible to ignore how the whole thing is constantly softened by gentle intros or various melodic touches dropped in situ ("Last June", "Everybody Loves You", "Outsiders Art", "Vapid Adolescents Blues").

But while, standing under a stage with your favourite brand of beer in hand, it'll come across as a record worth rating positively, listening to it at home you can't ignore the random repetition of all the flaws of an already saturated genre.

The combination of a mostly listless streak, resigned to easy-consumption clichés, and solid, bright songwriting shows up in a handful of tracks, two at most; while "Cult Of Mary" is high-speed punk'n'roll of the kind that only nostalgics for the street-punk band Silver could love. If anyone still remembers them. But the rest sits in a redundant little routine that eventually wears thin. Wade MacNeil (formerly of Alexisonfire) is a good singer but certainly ill-suited to replacing his unwieldy predecessor. Frank Carter had captivated everyone, to the point of sparking renewed and considerable interest in the whole metal/post/hardcore scene; perhaps because of a vocal delivery always pushed to the point of expressive anguish. In the end, it was never quite clear why.

It pains us to confirm it, but the biggest limitation of today's Gallows lies exactly here, in a comparison that's very hard to overcome amid a jumble of riffs and melodic lines from Laurent Barnard and Steph Carter piled on top of each other without really amounting to anything.

If this keeps up, we'll soon find ourselves laying flowers on the graves of two bands: Gallows and Pure Love.

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02/11/2012