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Review: 'CARTER, FRANK & THE RATTLESNAKES/ DEAD!'
'London, Camden, Electric Ballroom, 10 Nov 2016'   


-  Genre: 'Punk/New Wave'

Our Rating:
Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes are out on tour to promote the advanced sales of their second album. It's out in the new year when they will return with a bigger tour. The fact they sold out this tour in a matter of days suggests the next one will also sell like hotcakes.

We arrived just as the first band finished playing and in time for the main support Dead! Yes we got to see Dead! live who are a classic college rock/indie band who if I hadn't been going to gigs at the Electric Ballroom since before any of them were alive would have got me very excited indeed as it was they were a very entertaining support band.

The one song that really stood out was Enough Enough Enough. It really should be the set closer with the singer shouting at the end something along the lines of "Well have you had enough yet?" Either way it was spiky and pretty cool and they should be able to build a decent following if they work hard enough at it. I also kind of liked the actual set closer You're So Cheap so Dead! are worth seeing as a support act at the moment and possibly as a headliner in a year or two. Keep an eye on them.

Well, the crowd were more than Up for Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes who are now bigger than Frank's old band Gallows and the Ballroom was going nuts before they even hit the stage. As soon as they appeared the place was ready to go radio rental. As they launched into Trouble it was ready to pulverize us and then Frank appeared in his natty Gucci suit. It seems oddly right for a Hardcore Punk band to be dressed by Gucci these days, but whatever he's wearing he's going to give us everything he's got.

Fangs got the pit going mental and we had to start moving back a bit as expected. Rotten Blossom had a bit of a preamble from Frank who likes to communicate a lot between songs to make sure we know this band are all about love and respect, no matter how hard ore the music or the dancing. In the middle of it, Frank left the stage went down the side of the ballroom to the wheelchair enclosure and launched himself into the crowd to continue singing and surf his way back to the stage. It was great and raucous and at the same time a touch calculated as his stage moves have become a little bit more managed than they used to be.

Juggernaut hit us like an express train and really opened things up even more as Frank wanted the pit to go round the sound desk. It was a touch nuts but no more than expected.

Then, just as he had at the show at the Underworld almost a year ago he got everyone (or almost everyone) to sit or crouch down for Lullaby, having to stop the song to stop people having a go at the one person still standing. it's a neat trick but once you've seen it pulled off a couple of times its appeal wears thin, unlike the song itself, which still sounds great and helps Frank prove he can sing as well as just shouting and yelling at us.

Just to add to the surreal edge at the end of the song, Frank made a comment and suddenly most of the audience are singing "Robbie Williams Angel to him!!" Ah, hardcore punk isn't what it used to be.

Just after the start of Beautiful Death, Frank had to stop things again as apparently someone had punched another fan in the face and Frank re-iterated that the band are all about love and respect and made them hug it out and get on with moshing like mad as they duly did. Modern Ruin was introduced as being from the new album that we were being encouraged to buy in advance at the gig. It went down a storm and is a good portent that the new album will be well worth getting.

They closed the set with a version of Paradise that was good and intense with Frank stage diving again as well as the guitarist. They left the stage with the feedback howling and the crowd cheering as expected.

They came back and the encore opened with a drum solo that eventually led into Snake Eyes, which sounded rather frantic. Frank then thanked us ,his family and all the Ballrooms staff and anyone else he could think of, while telling us he was 32 which meant I had been going to gigs at the Ballroom for his entire life. Damn, I felt old. They then played the brilliant Devil Inside Me: for me the best song of the set, it really went mad in the right way. That just left time for Frank's clarion call song I Hate You, which provoked easily the biggest sing along of the night and is a great way to end a set.

As the band walked off the stage they put Jennifer Warnes and Bill Medley's I've Had The Time Of My Life on and most of the hardcore punk audience of course started singing along. Even better, a good few people tried to recreate the lift that accompanies the song in Dirty Dancing and sometimes with hilarious effect it certainly made sure we were smiling a lot at the end of a really good night.
  author: simonovitch

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