Red Fang - Whales And Leeches

Published October 31 2013

*=Staff's pick	DOEN* Blood Like Cream* No Hope Crows In Swine Voices Of The Dead Behind The Light Dawn Rising Failure 1516 This Animal Every Little Twist*

Genre	Stoner Metal/Rock	A. Beam/D. Sullivan/M. Giles	Vocals
Tracks	11	David Sullivan	Guitar
Running time	40 Min.	Maurice Bryan Giles	Guitar
Label	Relapse Records	Aaron Beam	Bass
Release	21 October 2013	John Sherman	Drums
Country	USA	-	Keyboard
Producer	Chris Funk
Similar artists	Mastodon, Baroness

Although a band such as Red Fang should be right up my alley, their third album Whales And Leeched is my first encounter with them. It's one of those bands I've been hearing about for a couple of years but for some reason I've never come around to check them out and now was the time. One of the triggers was the fact that the album art work is absolutely stunning when you see it up close - it's one of those albums that I'd consider buying on LP just because it looks to great.

Musically this bears a lot of similarities to Mastodon's and Baroness' more rock-oriented moments, with its although with more of a punk feeling. These punk influences are apparent in many songs - such as Blood Like Cream, No Hope, Voices Of The Dead and This Animal - while there are a lot of sophisticated, intricate song structures there as well. On the one hand, you could say that this gives a lot of contrast to the album. On the other hand, you could say that it's a mixed bag, for better and for worse.

Having spurred my interest, I started looking up Red Fang's earlier work and compared with Murder The Mountains from 2011, Whales & Leeches has a more overall accessible and less brutal sound, although still keeping a distinct, own identity. I do tend to forget some of the songs right after listening to them, which is a shame, and others plainly fail to spur my interest - such as the simplistic No Hope, the drawn-out Dawn Rising and the somewhat insipid Failure. These are in no way bad songs and others that listen to the album might disagree with me, but I still feel that some songs fall short.

However, there is brilliance here as well; I especially enjoy the heavy opener DOEN and Blood Like Cream, with its great riffs and the somewhat threatening lyrics together with the punkish chorus. Every Little Twist is another fine song with some cool vocal harmonies and almost spellbinding riffing - a perfect song to close the album.

It's possible that this review comes across as more negative than positive but rest assured that Whales And Leeches is a good album with some great highlights - I'm gonna keep coming back to the good songs for a long time. It just doesn't capture my interest all the way through and I would have wanted something more in order to score it higher. I will say this however: it is one of those albums where I reckon that the songs will be a lot more powerful live than on record. I will definitely continue checking out Red Fang's earlier work and keep an eye out for their future endeavours. They're coming to Gothenburg in spring as well, and that's of course a no-brainer.

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
7	7	6	6	6

Summary
6 chalices of 10 - Bjorn