UK punk juggernauts Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes are preceded by their reputation for legendary, unpredictable live performances. Having dropped in last April to tour alongside fellow English lads Bring Me The Horizon, Frank and his crew were back for their biggest headline shows to date, following 15 dates across Europe as part of their massive ‘The End Of Suffering’ World Tour.
Tassie four-piece A. Swayze & The Ghosts first commanded the country’s attention last year at BIGSOUND, and their support slot on Frank Carter’s Melbourne tour leg backed-up the buzz. Frontman Andrew Swayze instantly raised the energy in the room, growling into his mic and dancing sensually along to gritty cuts from the Hobart natives’ self-titled debut EP. Entirely consumed in the music, and channelling serious Iggy Pop vibes, Swayze’s magnetic persona had punters completely engrossed in his every movement, and the crowd rapidly grew to reflect this.
“When you come to our gigs,” Frank Carter warns, raising one of his tattoo-covered arms, “you will see stuff that you won’t see at any other show.”
Wiping sweat from his dark, eyeliner-framed gaze, Swayze leant into the audience, his punchy vocals front-and-centre as the band perfectly tore through guitar-drenched atmospherics. The brilliantly deadpan lyrics to their latest single “Connect To Consume” (“Facebook. Insta. Snapchat. Tumblr. Pornhub. YouTube. Pinterest. Flickr.”) made it a standout cut, and with the band slotted to play SXSW in a few months, we’ll no doubt be seeing them filling venues like the Croxton on their own headline circuits very soon.
I’ll admit, I’m extremely late on the bandwagon when it comes to Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes, but within the first five minutes they took to the stage, it was very clear to me that his cult following was not built on empty hype. “We brought every inch of fucking rain that we could from the UK,” leadman, Frank Carter himself, growled emphatically, addressing the bizarre torrential storm that had coincided with the quartet’s arrival.
I’ll try and limit the spoilers for anyone yet to make their Frank Carter live show debuts, but the official heads-up came four songs in: the charismatic redhead made his way across to a bar at the side of the stage, climbed up on the counter, and leant down to pull cash out of his pocket to buy a round for some fans, all without missing a breath in the song. “I forgot to leave a setlist on the bar!” he joked, though he’d moved so swiftly that most of the audience were still only just realising where he’d disappeared to.
“When you come to our gigs,” Frank Carter warned, raising one of his tattoo-covered arms, “you will see stuff that you won’t see at any other show.” Mind you, we already had at this point. He had already walked over raised hands of the crowd, to perform elevated in the middle of the mosh pit, before perfectly executing his signature crowd-surfing handstand. It was a ‘warm-up’ of Olympic proportions, leaving (new) fans to question how the hell this set could develop at such an exponential rate.
Filtering punk bravado through rock and hardcore nuances, the band’s high-octane tracks flirt between melodic, hope-filled, affecting numbers, and antagonising, disenchanted observations of the world, and the highly interactive nature of their live show is extraordinary in that it encourages fans to connect with these stories collectively.
At one point, Frank instructed the entire dancefloor to slow-dance to “Love Games”, at another, he created a opens a circle to invite an all-female moshpit (“You will never see a happier fucking mosh-pit in your whole life!”) for old favourite “Wild Flowers”, and he had the room tearing-up with “Angel Wings”, which he prefaced with a brutally honest heart-to-heart about his battle with depression.
There were still flashes of his notoriously aggressive past, like the ode to your worst enemy, “Crowbar”. In some ways, it was hard to imagine that this Frank Carter, who Facetimed his daughter, home sick from school in the UK, for hit single “Lullaby” (written for her), was the same former Gallows vocalist, once associated with furiously violent live shows. That’s not to say Frank Carter has lost any of his emotion or edge — with the incredible chemistry of The Rattlesnakes, he’s simply taking new territory, making room for a legion of new fans, myself included.
Photos by Tim Lambert.