Review by Rosh on October 3, 2023.

Red Fang is definitely one of those bands that I see as "another one of a lot" rather than the most independent entity, since along with bands like The Sword and High on Fire, they're basically another draw in the hat of modern stoner rock/metal. They somehow have a modern sound for sure, but actually, it's hard to say exactly what distinguishes this movement of early-mid 2000's bands from those of the 90's. If I had to take a stab at it, though, I guess it has something to do with the increased diversity among this movement when you factor in the similarity of other modern acts like Mastodon or whatever to the aforementioned stoner bands. This crop of artists seem to augment their sound with elements that would've initially broken the boundaries of stoner rock/metal, and so it's not surprising that a lot of bands belonging to this circle are also mentioned as the face of modern heavy music.

And Red Fang is, I suppose, a textbook example of this movement because their influences are pretty diverse, packaging everything stoner and doom adjacent into a coherent offering. In a decade or so, they seem to have only further embraced both their more melodic and their more aggressive tendencies, which is nice to see because it contradicts stoner music's long-running reputation for being one-note and repetitive. Only Ghosts is, then, not only well-balanced, but consistently enjoyable across its 10 tracks. Imagine the more outlandish and groovy riff tendencies of Soundgarden meshed with the gritty crunch of High on Fire for a good picture of what Red Fang do on their 2016 offering. Along those lines, this is definitely some of the "grungier" stoner rock I have heard, with many tracks transitioning into bouncy power chord riffs after their initial guitar or bass hook, ones that sound immensely influenced by Black Sabbath without being particularly metal either. Specifically, one should listen for the "oh-oh, oh-oh, ah-ohh" vocals in "Cut It Short" for a good example of this band's less metal tendencies, in spite of how heavy they are.

One enigmatic thing about the music on Only Ghosts is that almost all of the instrumentation is a bit more staccato-heavy than the majority of groovy metal you'll hear, which works acceptably well with the lyrical refrains that involve repeating the same general phrase with slightly different wording every time ("Shadows" and "Not For You" in particular). This is a decent formula, because the music relies on this stop-and-start thump to milk catchiness out of repetition, but it still means you feel like you've heard every song on the album before, even if they all do sound quite nice. I have mixed feelings about this, because while Kyuss and Orange Goblin never struggled with making the listener feel like they've heard the tunes on the album before, those bands also never sounded this unique, or used repetition to a hypnotic effect.

Production-wise, Only Ghosts is Red Fang's strongest offering yet, with everything sounding full and up-front. This means that all the niche tendencies of the compositions still present themselves strongly, even if they do bleed together. This is quite important, too, because the band has quite a layered sound, from the ever-prominent low-end, to the psychedelic echo effect on the vocals, to the more low-keyed lead guitar work. Furthermore, when they get more sludgy on tracks like "The Smell of the Sound", they're basically slowing down the tempo enough to where you can appreciate the richness of their soundscape. Overall, the music on Only Ghosts isn't more involved than it needs to be, but it's got these subtle intricacies buried beneath its overt accessibility and energy.

Red Fang is pretty much the archetype for modern stoner rock, or whatever you want to call this type of rock/metal. With their 2016 effort, they offer something that isn't quite safe considering it's still relatively eclectic sounding stuff, but is definitely going to resonate with a newer generation of heavy rock fans. I'm not sure exactly what the mood or the attitude of this kind of music is, so I don't have a thematic note to close on, but it might be something along the lines of "she still wants to know what I still don't know..."

Rating: 8.4 out of 10