Hosts: Neil & Chris
Duration: ~94 minutes
Release: 26 May 2025
This is the one. For Neil, Gun's Gallus isn't just a Scottish hard rock classic from 1992, it's the soundtrack to driving up to Preston (or was it Lancaster?) University, windows down, volume up, questioning everything about the future. The album's message resonated deeply: "Why don't you do it, why don't you go" became "can't let this chance pass me by, I can see it for the first time." That personal connection carries through every discussion of Mark Rankin's vocals, the boxing metaphor of Benny Lynch on the cover, and the album's lean, no-nonsense production.
Recorded at Park Lane Studio in Glasgow by Kenny MacDonald (who also produced Texas albums, engineered by Al Clay who worked with Pixies), Gallus represents Gun at their tightest. Chris believes this is Gun's best record, the songwriting, riffs, and melodies superior to the debut Taking on the World and more focused than the commercially successful Swagger. Released 31st March 1992 competing against the Black Album, Nevermind, and a saturated grunge market, it still reached #14 UK albums chart. The band wanted it to sound like "Glasgow on a Saturday night," raw and purposeful without the polish they felt marred their debut. Every track feels battle-ready, no hiding behind production tricks, just confident swagger and rock solid performances.
Steal Your Fire opens with that ripping riff, Mark Rankin's voice cutting through like he means every syllable. Welcome to the Real World showcases the album's lyrical maturity: "poor men left with nothing yet rich men wanting more, so ask yourself a question what are we living for," painting images without preaching, letting listeners think. Higher Ground demonstrates the international appeal beyond Glasgow specificity, ambition and struggle as universal themes. Watching the World Go By closes the album with a massive anthem, the fade and guitar solo combination Neil loves, track 7 ballad energy ending side A perfectly. The album's 50 minutes 16 seconds never overstays, 10 tracks of focused rock and roll with common themes: ambient intros/footsteps soundscapes, long fade-outs (60 seconds), purposeful production choices creating personality. Every song feels essential, the band wrote 18-20 tracks but only 10 made the cut because only 10 were strong enough.
Gallus captures a specific moment when British hard rock still had a heartbeat in 1992, existing in a transitional space before the decade fragmented into Britpop, grunge dominance, and nu-metal. Gun represented the best of that UK scene: tight, confident, unafraid to be massive without apology. The album's title, Scottish slang for bold or cheeky, perfectly encapsulates the attitude. They toured with Def Leppard on the Adrenalise tour, opened for the Rolling Stones, played stadiums and small clubs with equal conviction. Despite reaching #14 UK and charting three singles top 50, they never broke America the way Swagger's Word Up briefly did. The production remains a masterclass in restraint: Al Clay (Pixies engineer) and Kenny MacDonald created something that sounds effortless but is nearly impossible to replicate. Gun's 2024 album Hombres proves they're still capable of capturing that Earth Versus the Wildhearts energy decades later, Dante's vocals carrying the legacy forward even as Mark Rankin's original work remains definitive for many fans.
Perfect for: UK hard rock enthusiasts who remember when Kerrang! and Raw magazine covered this scene religiously, Thunder/Little Angels/Almighty fans exploring the Glasgow connection, anyone who believes great songwriting and tight musicianship shouldn't be overshadowed by bad timing and label politics, listeners who appreciate rock bands sounding like a well-oiled machine rather than studio constructions, Toby Jepson completists noting his 2008-2010 touring stint with Gun before Wayward Sons, boxing fans who understand the discipline/training metaphor running through the album's aesthetic, those discovering Gun through recent albums like Hombres wondering what the 90s classics sounded like.