The reunion comes after a meeting in March 2024, during which the band members realised they could no longer recall the reasons for their split. “We’re pretty excited, we hope you are too,” Turner wrote, signalling the band’s enthusiasm for the upcoming shows. While no specific dates or venues have yet been revealed, the announcement has already sparked considerable interest, with fans taking to social media to express their excitement.

Million Dead formed in 2000, spearheaded by Cameron Dean and Julia Ruzicka, and were soon joined by Frank Turner and Ben Dawson. The group became known for their energetic live performances and distinctive blend of post-hardcore and punk rock influences. In 2003, they released their debut album, A Song to Ruin, which received favourable reviews from critics and established them as a prominent act in the UK’s alternative music scene.

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Their second and final album, Harmony No Harmony, followed in 2005, marking the band’s evolution towards more complex arrangements and showcasing a wider range of influences. Despite the band’s relatively short lifespan, these two records have been considered seminal works within the post-hardcore genre, earning Million Dead a loyal following.

The band’s initial run came to an abrupt end in September 2005, following a final performance in Southampton. The members cited “irreconcilable differences” as the cause for their split, and in a candid statement at the time, the band remarked that “it would be impossible to continue.” They left with a cryptic yet memorable declaration that they would “rather leave a good-looking corpse.”

Frank Turner’s departure from the group marked the beginning of his successful solo career, with his debut album Sleep Is for the Week arriving in 2007. Meanwhile, other band members also remained active in the music scene. Tom Fowler and Julia Ruzicka formed a series of projects, including Quiet Kill and The Idle Hearts, continuing their exploration of experimental and alternative music.

In the decade following the band’s split, Turner would go on to release nine additional albums, earning widespread acclaim and securing a place as one of the UK’s leading singer-songwriters. His most recent album, Undefeated (2023), reached Number Three on the UK charts. The singer-songwriter himself attributes some of this solo success to his origins in Million Dead, telling Punk Ska Press in 2011 that he “wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now if I hadn’t done Million Dead before,” and that he is “proud of the music”.

Speaking on the new single, Carter explained, “We talk about how rock and roll will never die, but we never really talk about how maybe the idea of the rock star should die. The whole concept and what it means has always been this glamorised moment, but ultimately when I put that suit on, it didn’t go very well for me. I’m just witnessing the world change so quickly and I’m still trying to come to terms with who I am and what the authentic version of me is. By giving people what I thought they wanted I think I got further and further away from who I actually am.”

Guitarist Dean Richardson further shed some light on the new album, saying, “Normally we don’t look backwards when making a record, but this has been looking to reach us for a long time. Some songs are old ideas reworked, fresh eyes on something that didn’t quite fit on their other records. Some of these songs were lost along the way because basically we didn’t really give them the space.”

Emerging from the ashes of Carter’s split with hardcore band Gallows in 2015, Frank Carter And The Rattlesnakes found mainstream success with their fun, often politically and socially charged mixture of hardcore punk and pop that characterises their sound. A highly charismatic and high energy frontman, Carter tempers his hard-hitting image and sound with a pledge to offer fans a safe environment at their shows, often encouraging equality and inclusivity.

Frank Carter And The Rattlesnakes will be heading out on an international tour with a UK and European leg set to kick off in February. Dark Rainbow is due for release on 26 January. Pre-order the album here. Purchase tickets to the tour here.

Frank Carter And The Rattlesnakes Tour:

06/02/2024 – The Great Hall – Cardiff
07/02 – O2 Academy – Bristol
09/02 – Academy – Manchester
10/02 – Northumbria Uni Student’s Union – Newcastle
11/02 – Barrowland – Glasgow
13/02 – O2 Academy – Leeds
14/02 – Wulfrun Hall – Wolverhampton
15/02 – Roundhouse – London
16/02 – Roundhouse – London
22/02 – Metropole – Berlin, Germany
23/02 – Live Music Hall – Cologne, Germany
24/02 – Bataclan – Paris, France
26/02 – AB Main Hall – Brussels, Belgium
27/02 – Poppodium – Tilberg, Netherlands

The annual festival returns to the Winter Gardens, Blackpool, running from Thursday the 3rd of August until Sunday the 6th, and will welcome Rollins to Blackpool for the first time on the Friday.

In a press release, Rollins expressed his joy at the invitation, stating, “I’m looking forward to being part of Rebellion Festival this year. I will be on my own, no band, just me speaking. Perhaps the lowest volume performance of the entire event!”

The festival is a celebration of all things punk, having been around around since 1996 (under the previous name Holidays in the Sun, a reference to a Sex Pistols track of the same name), hosting a multitude of punk acts in doing so.

This year’s edition features another frontman of a prominent 80s punk outfit, H.R from Bad Brains, and will see Neville Staples, formerly of two-tone ska band the Specials, and Brix Smith, former member of the post-punk band the Fall, perform solo too.

Other classic punk bands include English band the Damned, American groups M.D.C, TSOL and the Dickies, while English contemporary punk duo Bob Vylan are also set to perform at the renowned punk event.

As well as all the punk rock on offer there are groups whose music goes beyond the traditional punk realm, thereby exemplifying the festival’s ideals: bands like rock group the Only Ones and ska band Bad Manners aren’t specifically punk bands but they carry a certain punk attitude, an attitude that doesn’t particularly care what others may think of them, an attitude on which the festival is built on.

Rollins certainly embodies such a punk attitude. Starting off as a roadie for local Washington D.C punk bands, he formed and fronted State of Alert in 1980, and released an EP with this group before they disbanded later that year.

Rollins soon after became a fan of Black Flag, seeing as many shows as possible and even singing for the group on one occasion. Coincidentally the band was then on the lookout for a new vocalist after former singer Dez Cadena switched to playing guitar, and Rollins was thus invited to join.

Rollins’ stage presence helped Black Flag’s prominence and, after releasing six albums in as many years, the band became synonymous with the American punk scene. In 1986 the band disbanded, however, and Rollins formed another band, the Rollins Band, and also started his spoken word career, and has released seventeen spoken word albums to date.

Listen to “Rise Above” by Black Flag below:

Tickets for Rebellion Festival are available to purchase here.

They have just announced a rescheduling of said gig, which has been pushed back to the 15th August at the London, Brixton Academy. Consecutively, they will be playing in Manchester the following day at the Victoria Warehouse.

The last time the band set foot in the UK was last July at the Cheltenham festival, 2000 Trees. Their live performances have made quite a name for themselves through an invigorating energy brought to the stage by the band members. The barrier breaking music speaks for itself within a youthful punk band. Not to mention the liberty they transmit to the audience when they welcome their fans to jump on stage to dive headfirst into a swarming moshpit. Who would want to miss that.

Great success has come to kindly greet them since they released their latest album GLOW ON in 2021. It is their third full length studio album, which has proved to be the most successful, landing them top venue and sold-out shows around the globe. A much awaited response from a boundaryless and excavating band. “I think that there’s never really a plan set in place that has the potential to be disrupted if we wake up one morning and want to try something else. We try to never really apply too much structure to it, so it feels as boundless as it possibly can” they mention in an interview.

The Brixton Academy has been shut down ever since the fatal crowd crush during Asake’s gig on the 15th December. In order for the venue to unmuddle the circumstances, to create a safer environment for future events, Brixton Academy had no other choice other than to shut down for three months. A number of artists have had to adapt to the consequences and relocate or reschedule their shows to another time and place, including Turnstile. The venue has been shut voluntarily until April and still awaits an official date for it’s reopening.

Luckily, the punk band have managed to pull through with alternative dates and will be bringing their live sorcery back to the UK. Tickets for both gigs are now available to fetch online.

Click here for tickets.

UK Tour Dates:

15/08/2023 – Brixton Academy – London
16/08 – Victoria Warehouse – Manchester