Credit: Found On Internet

The Hype Machine – inescapable, uncontrollable, and affected by forces that not even the wiliest Cool Spotter or canniest Marketing Specialist can pin down. Sometimes it rages like a whirlwind around an act, sending them soaring to dizzy heights, before subsiding and being sent crashing back down again.

“Oh yeah, it’s definitely happened,” admits Stu Gilli-Ross, member of rising punk rock sensation, Gallows. We caught up with bassist as the band prepared for the Miami leg of this year’s Warped Tour and asked what it’s like to be in the eye of the storm. But unlike almost every other artist picked up by in a maelstrom of hype, Gallows are going in fully prepared and with their eyes open. “I think the backlash is probably starting soon.  Whether or not we’d got as far as we’ve got, doing what we do, we’d still be doing it. Even if we were still playing in our mate’s basement up in Leeds. We don’t really give a shit about the hype; we’re constantly tell people not to pay any attention to it and to make their own minds up. If it’s all gone tomorrow, we don’t give a shit. We’re just gonna keep playing.” For a band that has daytime Radio 1 playing the heaviest tracks for years, Gallows seem to be keeping their feet on the ground.

“It’s going pretty well. It’s getting easier now we’re more than halfway through now. The first couple of weeks we were finding our feet and stuff like that,” Stu reflects on how Gallows have coped with the Warped Tour so far. Even on this side of the Atlantic, there can’t be many people who haven’t heard of the Warped Tour. Every year, dozens of punk, hardcore, and ska bands travel across America in a festival so huge it puts a lot of European festivals to shame – except this one packs itself up and moves to a new city every day. “Now we just seem to be going along with the flow and doing our thing every day and then just hanging out. It’s not as difficult as we thought it would be to be honest.”