Planet Loud got the chance to speak to Gallows Laurent Barnard and Stuart Gili-Ross before their show at the Colchester Arts Centre. Here we discuss Britain past and present, Grey Britain and their involvement in the Relentless Lives of Artists documentary.
Planet Loud – First off, how has the beginning of 2010 been so far? You played a homecoming gig in Watford a few nights ago, how did it go?
Gallows – It was really good actually, I was quite worried cos the venue was huge.
Planet Loud – What was the capacity?
Gallows – One thousand four hundred, for outside of London that’s quite big. If it’s London, Glasgow or Manchester, you can get away with big old rooms, but Watford…. None of my London friends ever come to Watford, but I knew that they would come to this show. I had a really good time, there was such a big deal made out of this show, as I don’t think we’ve played Watford since 2006. It’s where we wrote all the songs, and it was kind of the central place we hung out and did gigs growing up. Our families came down and had a good time, so it was fun.
Planet Loud – 2009 was a huge year for you guys, with the release of Grey Britain, which seems to be getting accolades, left, right and centre, to an almost non stop tour schedule. What were the high points of the year for you?
Gallows – 2009 highlight? I think our album coming out was obviously a great highlight, we did some pretty cool tours, one with Every Time I Die, and they are awesome dudes. In America we did a tour with AFI, who again are one of the bands we grew up listening to and a band that we all love, they are awesome guys. Then we brought Trash Talk over, they’re another band we love to listen too, and again they’re awesome guys! I think it’s good just making new friends, just getting to party with bands you look up to, and the fact that they support us as much as we support them, because we love them that’s something that we really appreciate.
Planet Loud – Kind of like establishing a community.
Gallows – Exactly!
Planet Loud – You did the Warped Tour in the U.S. last year, how did Grey Britain go down there? Does your American audience understand where you’re coming from, because the dominant image of Britain in the U.S. is often quite twee, or are they more switched on than that?
Gallows – I think in America Grey Britain has been pretty well understood. Maybe not on Warped Tour, which is a completely different kettle of fish. It’s great if you’re like a pop band masquerading as punk rock, in that case you’ll have the best summer ever. When you’re a hardcore band from England who don’t really pull any punches, you know we don’t go on stage going “We’re so happy to play for you guys tonight”, we’re just like; “We’re here, we’re gonna play, if you like it cool, if you don’t fuck off”. I don’t think a lot of kids over there really get that at all, cos Warped Tour is pretty much kids. When we did our own headline shows, during the AFI tour, it went down really well. It was a bit like playing the small shows when we first started Gallows, where everyone was just getting sweaty and going for it. It was really cool, even now, like today when we do shows in the U.K they’re not as crazy as they used to be. Obviously today we’re playing with a barrier and before when we’d set up there would just be chaos. I really miss that, but we’re all getting a bit old so maybe the barrier’s a good thing!
Planet Loud – How about the rest of the world? Do you think some of the songs can be universal to those feeling disaffected in their own nation?
Gallows – Definitely, we’re not the only country suffering from economic and social crisis. People can relate to a lot of the topics that Frank discusses, it’s quite ironic that we’re playing a church tonight…
Planet Loud – ‘Leeches’ will be a relevant one.
Gallows – Yeah. I think people can understand, even if they don’t they can still feed off the aggression of the music itself.
Planet Loud – Grey Britain definitely throws a challenge at Britain’s concept of ‘greatness’. The introduction to your ebook (about the album) reads like a manifesto against everything wrong within our current culture. Do you think Grey Britain can be extended to a critique against Britain’s imperial and colonial past, and how the nation built up it’s supposed greatness, by brutalising and subduing other nations? Considering this, can it actually be said that Britain was ever really great?
Gallows – I think a lot of the situations in the country at the moment are to do with where we’ve come from, and the attitudes of British people that have been instilled in them from their parents, and their parent’s parents. Yeah, I think where we are now is because of everything that has happened in the past, colonial or otherwise. I think if you are going to be criticising the current it has to be because of what’s happened before, to see how we have come to this situation. It could be definitely extended to that.
Planet Loud – Would you ever go back to that time and explore it in an album?
Gallows – In an album? I don’t think so, no, because we’ve always written about what we know and what affects us, our lives directly. Indirectly the album is a critique of the past but I don’t think we’d ever go there directly.
Planet Loud – The album is full of vivid imagery, was it the music that inspired you to make a film to accompany the album, or did the ideas for film inspire the song writing?
Gallows – It was kind of 50/50; we locked ourselves in a practice space as a band, without Frank, just writing music. At the same time as he was writing lyrics for the album he was writing a screenplay, that kind of bore a direct relevance to the record. When he came in with the lyrics and the screenplay, which everyone read, we threw out some of the music to fit that. It was a bit of both really, but the music had to definitely underpin the imagery.
Gallows – When we came up with the idea for Grey Britain, we didn’t really want people taking our vision of the album and misconstruing it, or making it something that it isn’t. So, in order to make sure it all falls under the same umbrella, we thought it would be better if we took control of the videos, and made it all link to our concept of Grey Britain. When we did Orchestra of Wolves we didn’t really have a focus on one particular thing, none of those videos made any sense. This time we wanted continuity and keep control of it, which everyone assumes you lose when you sign to a major label. We just wanted to make sure everything tied into the Grey Britain theme.
Planet Loud – This may bear no relevance, but I just wanted to ask, does Tim Burton’s Sweeny Todd and Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness have any influence on the album? All three open on the banks of the Thames, a motif that runs through each text, and are a critique of Britain within the time they were written. Is there anything in this, or is it purely personal reading?
Gallows – I don’t think that’s coincidental at all. I know Frank is really into Sweeny Todd and Sherlock Holmes – he’s actually gone to see the new film now! The whole idea of underground England which a lot a classical writers used to point to, I mean like the plague and the Great Fire of London, they all influenced the album, even as far as the artwork goes. All that imagery is spot on; it’s exactly the dark, gothic London of the past that inspired us.
Gallows – That imagery of London, and the murkier side of it has probably influenced us more in the videos we did. I know that we looked at films, films like Sweeny Todd and Eastern Promise bore a direct influence on how we wanted to shoot the film and represent what was visually going on in the album, in a cinematic sense.
Planet Loud – Lyrically and musically, three distinct times seem to run throughout the album, as you’ve just mentioned, that of the Great Plague of London of the 1600’s, the turn of the 20th century and the present. One particular moment, which sounds turn of the century, is the piano and violin section at the end of ‘Death Voices’. Was this a conscious decision to incorporate musical themes/symbolism to signify and connect various times, if so why?
Gallows – Yeah, if you listen to the end ‘Death Voices’ the song builds up then breaks into the kind of sound you hear at the time of the Second World War. That again is linked to the theme of the apocalypse, the image of a family during wartime sitting round listening to the radio. That’s why it sounds like a radio, which was the idea, to conjure the image of the old fashioned, the gramophone and the associations of World War Two.
Planet Loud – Are the connections your making between these three times, concerned with attitudes and ideologies in society that are still as prevalent now as they were 400 years ago. For example religious attitudes; the lyrics of ‘Leeches’ could be sung to the clergy back then as well as now, the only thing that seems to have changed is the churches grip on the country.
Gallows – Yeah, obviously religion throughout the ages has always been the main cause of disharmony, conflict and war. That, as we can see today, hasn’t changed at all. Frank’s attack on the Catholic religion is mainly an attack on all religion. Conflicting belief has always been the root of all evil.
Planet Loud – Some critics have said a vein of hopelessness runs through the album and by the end it offers nothing but annihilation. Do you think this is taking some things expressed a little to literally? Could the lyrics “So kill yourself, cos there ain’t nothing left…” be read as a challenge to change, like a “make your life worth living, for yourself and others, or don’t live at all” statement?
Gallows – Everyone always says that it’s a very pessimistic record, but I always say it’s a wake up call. We want to make people aware that things don’t have to be this way, that they can make a change. The onus is on the listener, once you get past the ‘Oh, this is a good mosh part’ view you can see the lyrics mean something, and go out there and do positive things. I mean we’ve been doing things for charity, the other day my friends ran a marathon and I gave them money to support them and the charity. I was thinking that since I joined this band I’ve done so much more for charity, even raising awareness. For a band that appears so nihilistic we want to put positive messages out there as well as the negative.
Planet Loud – Are the themes covered on Grey Britain something you want to expand on with the next album, or do you think you’ll go in a different direction?
Gallows – Well we haven’t really thought about the next album, well maybe a bit. In a way yes and no, the ideas that we’ve been discussing are similar but we don’t want it to be another Grey Britain.
Planet Loud – With the album your making statements that other artist seem to scared to, even the ones who consider their politics as important as their music. Do you think this is due to a fear of speaking out, or a fear of being commercially unviable?
Gallows – Probably a bit of both really, more so the fear of being commercially unviable, but sometimes it can be difficult to articulate certain political points of view.
Gallows – I know that we alienate a lot of people, a lot of Christian metal hardcore bands who are huge, mainly because of their Christianity and that’s good enough for ninety per cent of Christians. Obviously I’m sure we alienate people, but when we first started the band we never started it to make friends or be commercial. We started it because of the music we believed in and we’d been thinking that a lot of bands didn’t have that. We can turn around and say that and hold our heads up high. A lot of bands would much rather have girls, drugs and money, with no credibility. I know we still get a lot of shit for what we say, and a lot decisions we’ve made, like who we affiliate ourselves with. A lot of the time are friends, who we’ve grow up with, all work for different companies now and are willing to help us out, it would be stupid to turn down help from our friends.
Planet Loud – The same could be said of a lot of bands live performances, you guys are noted for always giving it your all, but some bands don’t push themselves at all in performance. Why do you think so many are just willing to go through the motion?
Gallows – The reason we give it our all is simply because we believe in the music, and there are even songs we don’t play live cos we give it too much. The track off our first record, called ‘Six Years’, it’s my favourite song on the album, when we do play it live we destroy ourselves. We smash instruments, smash each other and go crazy, so we made a conscious decision to never play this song live again, cos we’d put a whole sets worth of energy into one song. If the crowd are going for it we vibe off that, if the crowd aren’t going for it we’ll go even crazier, just to get them going.
Planet Loud – Last December you were involved with the Relentless – Lives of Artists documentary, which centres on surfing, snowboarding and music. How did you get involved in this and how did you find the experience?
Gallows – It all started when my friend, who used too be in a hardcore band back in the day, quite ironic, cos he works for a big drinks company now. Anyway they offered to help us out and they got in touch about doing the documentary, we knew some of the guys who were filming it, as they were some of the guys who worked with us on the Grey Britain shoot. That’s how it started, they came out to Warped Tour, on the worst dates of the tour, to get the nitty gritty, which they got. But I know, having met all these people that work at Relentless, that they are so into the artistry of extreme sports and music. I know that other energy drinks companies are just like “Be crazy, wacky, extreme”, whereas Relentless try to bring in a bit of integrity to what they do. For example making sure everything on the film looks beautiful, it’s something I’ll look back on and think “Wow, that looks amazing”, it captured a time in our lives that was rough but it shows that we can get past these things. I mean it’s not as rough as a guy jumping off mountains, we’re just guys playing guitars, but it’s that same passion for music as it is for extreme sports.
Planet Loud – It is interesting to combined these three disciples, which seem to go so well together, what is your take on this? Why do you think the three interconnect so well?
Gallows – Like I say, I think it’s all about giving your all for your art, and for the others featured, sport is an art for them. The main link is how far you’ll go for your art.
Planet Loud – Extreme sport and heavy music seem to go hand in hand, for example when you go to a festival for one the other will feature somewhere.
Gallows – It’s all things that started off very underground. I know snowboarding has only recently entered into the Olympics, but the kind of boarding their doing is getting from start to finish as quickly as possible without dying. It’s not the same kind of rush you get with non-Olympic snowboarding.
Planet Loud – After your U.K and Australia shows you have some time off between March and June. What plans, other than resting, do you have for that time?
Gallows – We’ll play a few more shows; write some more songs, I mean we’ve all got our own interests outside the band so we’ll be pursuing those. We’re free agents at the moment, we’ve finished our contract with Warner, which was a two album deal, so we’re courting other labels as it were.
Gallows – We’re going to be doing a few festivals, we’ve got one really cool thing that’s in the pipeline but I can’t really say right now.
Planet Loud – Can you hint?
Gallows – Can’t hint at all I’m afraid but you’ll find out soon enough!
Interview by Emma Webb
