They might go over the heads of the Hot Topic set, but the men of Gallows are punks without borders

Over the past few weeks, the men of Gallows have slowly come to the realization they don’t fit in on the Warped Tour, and not just because they come from a land far removed from America. Reached on his cellphone at a Boise, Idaho, tour stop, guitarist Laurent “Lags” Barnard reveals that getting used to the summer weather stateside hasn’t been the problem. Each day, he and his bandmates—singer Frank Carter, guitarist Stephen Carter, bassist Stuart Gili-Ross, and drummer Lee Barratt—hit the stage in conditions that remind them a lot of home, namely Hertfordshire, in dreary old England.

“The last 11 shows—it’s been raining at every one of them,” Barnard says. “The show today got moved indoors, which at least was a bit of a change. But it’s not what we signed up for.”

Although they might have been hoping for a shorts-and-T-shirts summer of endless sunshine, that’s not the real reason that they’re asking themselves what the hell they’re doing on punk rock’s biggest stage. More frustrating to the group is that almost no one in the crowds they’ve been playing for knows what to make of them.

That’s not surprising. As proven on Gallows’s wildly epic new album, Grey Britain, Barnard and his bandmates traffic in a brute-force strain of uncompromising hardcore. That, combined with song topics that argue that Jolly Old England is going right down the shitter, has been enough to confuse the 13-year-old mall rats who now make up Warped’s core constituency. The pubescents have been wetting their Calvin Kleins to 3OH!3’s platinum-selling, techno-tinted crunk-rock single, “Don’t Trust Me”, not waging war in the pit to a group of pasty Englishmen who are on a mission to finish what GBH and Discharge started.

“This tour would be a lot easier if there were different bands on it,” Barnard says candidly. “The way we play is to put a lot of energy and passion and aggression into our music and performance. And we’re out here playing for kids who would rather be at a Jonas Brothers concert. The biggest crowd pull on this tour is probably 3OH!3. Nothing against those guys—I haven’t met them, but they seem like decent guys—but this is supposed to be a punk-rock tour. Kids should be coming out for Bad Religion and NOFX rather than bands with dance beats.”

Gallows shouldn’t be shocked. Punk has become a potentially lucrative career, if you’re willing to sweeten things with plenty of sugar. The problem for Gallows is that it’s placed from-the-heart art ahead of geared-to-the-masses commerce.

“We’ve come all the way from the U.K., and only a handful of kids really get it,” Barnard argues. “But even though most of them don’t give a fuck, we’re definitely turning a few heads.”

This won’t surprise anyone who’s been exposed to the battery-acid-drenched atom bomb that is Grey Britain. In the tradition of Refused’s The Shape of Punk to Come and Fucked Up’s The Chemistry of Common Life, Gallows has made a record that’s going to challenge not just the general public but the band’s own fans. Hardcore dogmatists will find plenty to love off the top, whether it’s Carter’s blown-throat bellowing on “London Is the Reason” or the all-droogs-on-deck, metal-spiked sing-along “I Dread the Night”. Gallows also shows that it’s come a long way from its monochromatic 2006 debut, Orchestra of Wolves. “Leeches”, for example, mixes Rage Against the Machine bombast with an attack that’s like Motí¶rhead with a blown drive shaft.

Halfway through, though, things get really interesting. Wholeheartedly embracing the idea that the most punk thing you can do is rip up the punk-rock rule book, Barnard and his bandmates start seriously messing with the program. The full-on ultraviolence in “Death Voices” unexpectedly spirals into a one-minute coda that’s all black-mass piano and strings, and “The Vulture (Acts I & II)” finds Carter actually singing, backed by heaven-sent synth and acoustic guitars. And just in case there are any lingering doubts about whether Gallows has become much more than a punk band, Grey Britain ends with a classical suite that sounds like it was dreamed up with help from the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields orchestra.

“I think people think of punk as having boundaries, but the whole idea of punk is that it should have no rules,” Barnard says. “This record was definitely a challenge. I think it flows from start to end, and even when we’re doing things with strings and piano, it never loses its dark, heavy tone.”

Ultimately, Gallows has created one of the most ostentatiously sprawling albums in hardcore history, the songs held together by a production job—courtesy of Vancouver’s Garth Richardson—that’s paint-peeling without sounding like it was recorded in Wattie Buchan’s outhouse.

“We didn’t want the kind of guy who, every album he produces, it sounds the same—i.e., John Feldmann from Goldfinger,” Barnard says. “Garth got the sound that we were looking for. We did things the way that bands used to, back in the day, with everything live. There’s no click track at all, apart from the strings, where you have to have it because you had 33 people playing. The idea was to have it all really raw.”

The guitarist laughs, and then adds: “What was really funny was that, to make it raw, it actually cost a lot of money. We did it reel-to-reel to give it that warm vibe. We didn’t want Pro Tools. We wanted something that sounded like early Sabbath.”

The really hilarious thing being, of course, that today’s Warped Tour hordes are probably no more appreciative of early Sabbath than they’ve been of the band that’s just made a punk-rock landmark. Is Barnard pissed about that? Abso-fucking-lutely.

“This Warped Tour is like a giant Hot Topic show, with everyone showing up in their neon T-shirts,” he says disdainfully. “It’s weird. I guess it’s a bunch of kids trying to find their identity, taking baby steps into punk rock. And we’re a band that’s already at the intermediate level.”

Gallows plays the Vans Warped Tour at Thunderbird Stadium on Friday (August 14).