Review for Red Fang’s "Only Ghosts" with full album stream

The Americans Red Fang presented the fourth LP "Only Ghosts", which brought together ten fresh, quite typical for the band compositions, that definitely will meet their fans’ expectations. The musicians follow their style and the new record is full of truly rocking, powerful tracks. Most of them can be included into live setlists along with already branded "Prehistoric Dog", "Wires" or "Hank Is Dead".

"Only Ghosts", like its two predecessors, was released via Relapse Records. It was produced by Ross Robinson, well known for his work on the albums of Sepultura, Korn, Slipknot, and mixed by the recording engineer Joe Barresi, who gave to Red Fang’s sound some notable Queens Of The Stone Age’s features.

The overall jaunty sound of the album has some pleasant similarities with the previous LP "Whales And Leeches" (2013). Why should we call it an advantage? Probably, because the musicians have gone from that excessive monotony and their attempts to pay more attention to the post-rock mid-tempo motives, which made the second record "Murder The Mountains" (2011) so different from all other Red Fang’s works. The tracklist mostly consists of dynamic, brewing, impulsive rhythms, confident and skillful guitars sound. From time to time some compositions truly remind proper grunge rock music.

Along with this the musicians do not exclude the firm genres, like stoner rock and partly sludge metal. With the certain compositions, the band goes into long, multi-faceted dimensions of riffs and solos.

Against a backdrop of the tracklist, such songs like "Flies", "Shadows" and "Living In Lye" with their lively, rapid rhythms and not too shabby riffs can reflect the most vivid picture of the album. As for the stoner side of the LP, there are impressive tracks "No Air" and "The Smell Of The Sound", especially the bridge part of the last one.

The deluxe version of the album includes two instrumental bonus tracks "Dumb Guy" and "One Hit Two Hit". "Only Ghosts" was released on CD, standard and colored vinyl, which today is labeled with "Sold Out" sign on the band's website. In general, we could say that with the new LP Red Fang continue their series of pretty successful and quite exciting records.

Red Fang launch 16-bit Tetris-inspired game "Fangtris"

By Yuri Somov