-->
Red Fang is an American rock band from Portland, Oregon, formed in 2005. It is composed of guitarist and vocalist Bryan Giles, bassist and vocalist Aaron Beam, guitarist David Sullivan and drummer John Sherman. The band has released five studio albums: Red Fang (2009), Murder the Mountains (2011), Whales and Leeches (2013), Only Ghosts (2016) and Arrows (2021).
Red Fang started out on Wantage USA Records in Montana, where the band released its self-titled LP. Read more on Last.fm
I hate to admit it, but stoner rock is beginning to stagnate. That’s hard for me to admit. God knows I love the genre. The Kyuss bloodline only flows so far. Red Fang are not a bad outfit by any means. Had I never picked up a Sleep record or become such a Josh Homme devotee, this whole record might sound fresh to me. However, I have done those things….so its just kind of..what I like to call…”too influenced”. I’m going to erase this feeling by blasting Celestial Season.
Red Fang is a grower for sure. I’m not sure how it kept its hooks in me for so long, but maybe it was just that: its hooks. The riffs are like the dudes themselves: big, burly, and beat-up, sticking around only until the beer runs out. The most awesomely distinct Red Fang thing (though not exactly a new parlor trick) is the way a highly robotic riff builds and builds into they’ve whipped it into a full-on frenzy by song’s end. I couldn’t make much sense of what they were about until I saw them live, at which point I realized it was basically the same as Skynyrd’s used to be; that is, to start hot and just keep hammering until, by set’s end, you’ve burned it right on down. No frills, no lulls, no BS … just riffs on riffs on riffs. Perfect dude music.
I did enjoy ‘Murder the Mountains’, but found it fairly unoriginal. When you do the stoner-metal thing that’s done so often these days, you need something distinctive to keep things interesting—Red Fang seems to have left it out on this record.