Frank Carter and the Rattlesnakes

“Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes are good, you should give them a listen”. This is how I was introduced to them, the band whose music has influenced my life the most. The band releases all of their music through the independent record label International Death Cult set up by the band. This has helped to ensure their music is pure and exactly what they want it to be, this shows with the wide variety of songs from the best hate song in the world, “I Hate You” to the emotional love song written to Frank Carter’s daughter, “End Of Suffering”. Defined as a punk rock band by most it is clear that Carter has kept some of the power-pop from his previous band Pure Love.

After listening to Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes for a while I first got to see them at Leeds Festival in 2016. It was Saturday, it was 13:05, it was raining, it was the main stage. Opening with, “Trouble” one of their harder songs, multiple pits opened instantly slowly merging to one big pit, spoiler alert, the pit didn’t close until the stage was empty. This was when they only had one album released and it wasn’t until the second album, “Modern Ruin” in 2017 that we would get to see the softer side of Carter’s music.

It would be a long wait for the next time I saw them, 15th February 2019 at The Sugarmill Stoke. A much smaller venue than Leeds Festival, but smaller more intimate venues were what the band wanted for the lead up to the release of their third album, “End Of Suffering”. With a much longer set list than the previous live performance I had seen we were treated to a mixture of older fan favourites as well as a glimpse at a few of the tracks from the upcoming album. Concluding the gig like all others with, “I Hate You” I mentioned it earlier, this song that Carter himself says is about a special person everyone has in their lives that they hate more than anyone else in the world.

The song that has the most meaning to me is, “Anxiety”, a song where Carter opens up about his own anxiety, singing, “Cause I should be sweet but I’m not happy”. With the chorus encouraging people to sing with him and reminding them that it is okay to have anxiety and there is a place where they can be happy. This song made me realise that if a big scary looking guy like Frank Carter has anxiety it’s not a problem that I have it too.

So, thank you for indulging me by reading this, and I will leave you with this. Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes are good, you should give them a listen.

By Sam Clarke

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