October 21, 2011 12:02

Gallows: 'Frank Carter wanted us to turn into Queens Of The Stone Age'

Watford punks open up about their former frontman's departure

Photo Gallery: Gallows
Photo: Phil Wallis

Gallows have spoken about the departure of former frontman Frank Carter and revealed that they clashed after the singer told them he wanted to the band to become a straight-up rock act.

The band have now replaced Carter with Wade MacNeil, who was previously lead guitarist in Canadian hardcore band Alexisonfire and are currently playing their first live dates with their new singer across North America.

Speaking to Alternative Press, guitarist Steph Carter spoke about the clash with Frank over the future direction of Gallows, revealing that the band had recorded a lot of new material, but were unable to do anything with it with the singer both unsure about the band's future and now based in New York rather than London.

He said:

While Frank was in Brooklyn, we'd all been in studio working on new material. Myself, Lags [Barnard, guitar], Stuart [Gil – Ross, bass] and Lee [Barrett, drums] were all really happy with the direction it was going, but Frank wanted a change in direction. He wanted something that took us to the next step of being a big, successful, straight-up rock band, like Queens Of The Stone Age.

He continued:

The rest of us weren't ready for that. It was infuriating, because we'd written loads of songs, but until we had vocals on them, we couldn't really get a sense of what the songs actually were.

Guitarist Laurent 'Lags' Barnard added: "I just wanted to make another Gallows record. I'm all for the sound progressing, but only if it happens naturally, I'm not into the idea of going, 'We're going to make this kind of music now'. When there's five people in a band, one person shouldn't be able to dictate what everybody else does."

Frank Carter is currently writing material with his new band Pure Love, who are to set to record their debut album in early 2012.

Gallows play their first UK show with MacNeil on vocals later this year. The band will headline London's XOYO on December 13.

Video: SXSW 2009 - Gallows

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