I call this kind of punk rock music ‘building block rock’. There’s no veiled insult in there. Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes are a thrilling live proposition. The songs on their debut album Blossom have the quality of being familiar on only a second listen (or sometimes two minutes into a first listen) because the fat is trimmed out of everything they do. Making this song a lean, fast effective jolt of energetic angst.
The Rattlesnakes formula is as simple, as it is effective, as it is rare. A riff is a riff. It’s what the guitar does. The songs signature. The drums and bass drive the rhythm and mood respectively forward and Frank? Well Frank has a thing or two to say.
On Devil Inside Me Frank hollers about the creeping malevolence he feels rising in the back of his mind. In one sense it’s a song about speaking plainly with regard to mental health yet at the same time it plays with The Misfits and Iron Maiden imagery of Monsters and EC Comics to great Halloween effect.
Being in a mosh pit for Devil Inside Me is like being in a washing machine with a thousand elbows. That’s a compliment by the way.
