GIG REVIEW: Frank Carter and the Rattlesnakes, O2 Academy, Newcastle, Saturday 20 November 2021
Frank Carter looks like the sort of bloke you don’t want to mess with. A heavily-tattooed ball of pent-up anger and energy, he bounces around the stage like a pinball, hollering out his lyrics.
Yet offstage he’s thoughtful, quietly spoken, and cares deeply about the hardcore punk scene and the people in it.
He’s also the sort of frontman who doesn’t hesitate to get involved when things go a little awry, as they did here tonight.
The band are on fire from the off, blazing through their first four songs, and he’s already crowdsurfed from one side of the venue to the other, sinking a shot at both bars, despite having his left arm in a sling courtesy of a fractured elbow.
Then his sideman and songwriting partner, guitarist Dean Richardson, spots something he doesn’t like in the crowd, sets down his guitar and rushes down to the barrier.
A burly man is dragged from the seething moshpit by three security staff, and escorted straight out of a side door. Carter – clearly incensed – is after them like a shot, jumping offstage and following them out of the building.
Confusion reigns for a couple of minutes. You can hear the crew asking ‘where’s Frank?’, and no one seems to know. When he reappears he’s fucking furious.
It appears the man who was dragged out had punched a woman in the face in the moshpit, triggering a fracas, and Carter has had enough.
He launches into a tirade about how sick he is of men using gigs as an excuse to sexually or physically assault women, and says it’s got to stop. “That might be okay in his family, but it isn’t in this one,” he insists.
Then, like this extraordinary episode has never happened, Carter and the band launch into their next song, though it takes a couple more before the electric atmosphere they’d built up before the unwanted interruption fully returns.
Frank Carter and the Rattlesnakes are here as part of their tour for fourth album Sticky, released to rave reviews last month (ours is here).
It’s possibly the best of their career, even if it’s not the straightforward hardcore punk that we’ve come to expect from the band.
There are contributions from queer electro-punk artist Lynks and shouty electro-hardcore singer Cassyette, who are the support acts tonight, and join the band for Bang Bang and Go Get A Tattoo and Off With His Head, respectively.
The set is based around Sticky, opening with its excellent lead single My Town (sadly sans IDLES’ Joe Talbot tonight), with most of the album getting an airing. Take It To The Brink is the highpoint, though there are no lows; they’re all good songs.
The songs which have brought the Rattlesnakes this far aren’t forgotten; Devil Inside Me, from first album Blossom, is a belter, with a guy called Anthony plucked out of the audience and handed the mic. He absolutely slays it, and if he’s not in a band already, he should be.
Another Blossom track, I Hate You, makes its first appearance of the tour, and gets a rapturous reception.
But they save the best ’til last. Crowbar, from 2019’s End Of Suffering album, has become a sledgehammer of an anthem for the band, and performed here as the second of two encores, it transforms the whole floor into a heaving moshpit, all the way back to the mixing desk.
The Rattlesnakes have gone from cult band to enjoying more mainstream appeal. It’s a shame that in doing so they attract the sort of arsehole who thinks it’s OK to batter a woman. Well done Frank Carter for calling out this sort of behaviour.
