Album review: Red Fang's "Whales And Leeches"

Red Fang is appearing at The Wire in Berwyn, IL, on June 3--I'll be there.

The album review below originally appeared in the June 2014 issue of Illinois Entertainer magazine, on page 50.
Link to PDF file of the issue: http://www.joomag.com/magazine/illinois-entertainer-june-2014/0320603001401595138

Red Fang has inadvertently recorded the theme song for the past Chicago winter. On “DOEN,” the first track on the Portland band’s new 11-track album *Whales And Leeches,* the singer bellows: “Winter is your doom / sun set comes too soon.”  The instrumentation is high-energy, grungy and doomsday sufficient. Queens Of The Stone Age comparisons abound, with “Blood Like Cream” sounding like a bonus track from “Rated R”-era QOTSA. Red Fang is harder, though, more like Kings Of The Jurassic Age, and therefore similarities to legendary Pacific Northwesterners The Melvins make more sense (although Red Fang’s song structures are infinitely more linear than the Melvins’). Themes of tooth-and-claw survival are explored, with brash guitar riffs and screaming solos to match, especially prominent on “No Hope” and the seven-minute, slower tempo “Dawn Rising.”

7/10

- Jason Scales

Link to David Letterman appearance, playing "Blood Like Cream": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE9Iv56pBXo