Album Review

Gallows – Orchestra of Wolves

• 5th Jun 2007

What can I say? If you know anything about this band, you’ll know they are f%&king awesome! And that’s not just my opinion, everyone, everywhere who has heard them seems to love ’em. Kerrang even went as far as to call them ‘the best British punk band since the Clash’. That’s some claim. But it doesn’t take long to realise how right they are, it’s not just hype. Orchestra of Wolves is a brilliant album, it’s painful, skin-splittingly repulsive, and for that I salute Gallows.

Frank Carter’s grated larynx, must need regular holidays, and it’s absolutely bloody constant, a perpetual cacophonic food-mixer filled with bone and gristle, literally screaming over the din of the blender, ‘Let me out, let me the f%&k out, before I vomit the content of my seething absyss over the next meal you eat for the rest of your life.

Equally menacing are guitarists Laurent Barnard and Steph Carter and their noisy reaction to life. Their quixotic styles carve deep riffs with precise blades into the landscape crafted by drummer and bassist Lee Barratt and Stu Gili Ross respectively. All five of these musicians demands attention and all five of them work so well together, after thirty seconds they have all dissolved into one pulsing member, breathing in sync and cursing in harmony.