Warner Brothers Records has dropped British punk band Gallows after the groups second album failed to meet sales expectations. However, upon signing, the band received a large sum of their money up front and then released an album that was far less radio-friendly than the label hoped.
"We are the British music industry's biggest mistake," Gallows frontman Frank Carter told me 12 months ago during an interview promoting their second album, Grey Britain. Carter was responding to a question about how a punk band reacts when they've just signed a £1m record deal with Warner Music.
Rather than popping the champagne corks though, Carter was in the kind of articulate, unflinching mood that has made him a favourite interviewee for music journalists. Signed off the back of their live reputation and scorching 2006 debut Orchestra of Wolves – a punk/hardcore hybrid recorded by their mate in a house in the home counties – Gallows hit the jackpot with a lucrative deal when few bands were getting advances. And they were smart enough to know that, in many ways, it was all downhill from there. For a group that recalled second-wave UK punk bands like Discharge, it was the most brilliantly ridiculous major-label signing of recent times. "We see other bands being told what to do by their paymasters, but we're not one of them," guitarist Laurent Barnard said during the same interview.
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