Album Review: End of Suffering by Frank Carter & the Rattlesnakes

Frank Carter's musical career has been staggering. And on End Of Suffering, the third with his Rattlesnakes, he pushes the boat out further than he ever has in the past, further than anybody (even his biggest fans) could have imagined all those years ago when he first graced the pages of Kerrang! with Gallows. To date, Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes have blended buzzing Stooges punk, thick Queens Of The Stone Age riffs and winking alternative rock into something resembling Arctic Monkeys circa Humbug, as seen through a funhouse mirror.

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Frank Carter's music resembles a firework display on this dazzling new record. He mines increasingly sensitive territory, but you should still handle with care When Gallows arrived on the scene in the middle part of the last decade - led by a frontman who resembled Dennis The Menace if he'd spent all of his pocket money on flash art, or at the very least, had endured a stint in Russian gaol - few would have expected that, almost 15 years later, we'd be talking about Frank Carter with the reverence he's come to command thanks to a string of excellent takes on modern punk rock. Sure, Carter was arguably the finest frontman of his generation, but he had a fuse that looked set to expire long before he had time to explore emotions more sophisticated than the fury that defined his legendary early performances with the Watford punks.

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Although he gained notoriety as the hyper-aggressive frontman of UK hardcore act Gallows, Frank Carter has softened his musical output considerably in the last few years. His project Pure Love was a jarring shift to alt-rock from the Black Flag-worshipping punk made by Gallows, while Frank Carter & the Rattlesnakes' first two albums leaned into heavier rock sounds that came close to a middle ground between the two. Their third album, End of Suffering, feels less like a compromise between two sounds and more like a cohesive band.   Opening ….

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Given that Frank Carter's personality was always bigger than whichever scene it happened to find itself trapped in, his current role as a larger-than-life solo artist suits him well. The ex-Gallows/Pure Love front man's third album with The Rattlesnakes finds him flushed with self-confidence you could blunt a knife on. His ever-charismatic (and now actually bloody good) voice stampedes all over this record like a hippo in heat, leaving some pretty standard 'AM'-indebted rock songs trampled in its wake.

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