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Aside from their killer name and accompanying saber-toothed tiger teeth logo, the coolest thing about Red Fang is their sense of humor.
While there are legions of contemporary bands producing exquisite, deeply listenable metal, few are able to deliver amazing riffs and tell a funny story simultaneously, but in the video for “Prehistoric Dog,” Red Fang does just that. The clip for the song from the group's self-titled album tracks the Portland, Ore., group mocking some live-action, role-playing nerds in costume, going home to forge armor out of empty beer cars, and returning to play-fight with their freshly made enemies.
The tussle doesn't end well—the four Red Fang members leave the battlefield missing limbs and, in one case, a head. All of this action is seen while stoner-turned-agitated metal steamrolls through the speakers.
Red Fang has both the prowess and the character to make their material shine. Before a show opening for fellow metal men Valient Thorr at Cafe Bourbon Street on Nov. 13, bassist/vocalist Aaron Beam talked with Metromix about drawing inspiration from Christina Aguilera and the benefits of “nerd practice.”
How did all of you guys come together to form Red Fang?
We’ve known each other for years. The first time I talked to Bryan [Giles, guitarist/vocalist], he was still living in San Diego and had a band called Last of the Juanitas that I was helping get a show in Portland. David [Sullivan, guitarist] and I met when he moved to Portland for the first time in the mid- or late ‘90s. I’ve known all the guys for a good 10 or 12 years.
John [Sherman, drummer], David and Bryan were all playing together in a band called Party Time, and Bryan moved away, so David and John didn’t have any bands to play in. None of us had projects, and we started jamming together. Then Bryan moved back and we became a real band.
Did you have any specific sound in mind for the group when it started?
When it was me, David and John, we were getting super-stoned and just jamming in the basement. I was tuning down to C and we were playing stoner metal riffs. Not all of them were necessarily good, but it was fun playing [Black] Sabbath-y. When Bryan moved back, he had songs that were more hardcore. Last of the Juanitas was pretty inaccessible and mathy, and he was making a conscious effort to write music that people could relate to more. David, John and I were all in the same boat -- we'd been in bands that were overly complicated, and [we] were sick of it. We wanted to play music that was still interesting but you could actually rock out to rather than do your math problems to.
It wasn't like we talked about it or anything. We all have pretty diverse tastes, but the unifying thing was that we like things that are heavy. A lot of stuff qualifies as that. That's one of the things that makes it fun to be in this band: Bryan will write some Black Flag-inspired song, or I'll write something that kind of sounds like this Christina Aguilera song I like that none of them have probably ever heard. That influence will come in because all four of us are influenced by a lot of things, and mellow adults who can figure out how to work all that together.
What was the Christina Aguilera song and how did it inspire your work?
I don't know if I should say this. [Laughs] It's called “Hurt.” [Our] song [is] going to be on the new record that we're working on right now. No one would be able to figure out that that's what inspired it. It was just in the back of my mind while writing it. As you're writing, different ideas of what the thing sounds like will come into your head. You start down this path and it makes you think about something else you've heard.
Why do you like the metal Red Fang plays more than some music from the other bands you've played in?
It's complex music but it sounds simple. It stays simple enough that drunk people can appreciate it. [Laughs] A lot of songs work on a lot of different levels. Somebody who's not playing close attention can appreciate it, or a person who wants to slap headphones on and dissect the song can appreciate it, too. Plus, most of the bands we were in before were instrumental. We made a conscious effort to include vocals.
Tell us about your typical songwriting process.
Bryan will come in with some riffs, and we practice over at David's house in the basement and will work on them there. Sometimes, we do what we call “computer practice,” or “nerd practice.” We'll record our practices—I have basic recording stuff on my computer at home -- and we'll piece stuff together and work it out that way. Sometimes, it goes a little crazy: there's a song on the new record where we had a bunch of pieces we like but couldn't get it to work the way we wanted, so I stuck all the parts in the computer, made six different versions, e-mailed them, and we picked the one that seemed to work the best. Honestly, a lot of the songs that have gotten that treatment would never have existed otherwise because we would have banged our heads against the wall so much that we're like, “F--- it! This song is not meant to be.”
What effect has being from Portland played on your sound?
There's not a lot of heavy bands that people pay attention to here. Maybe that influences us in a way that we don't hear a ton of other bands that are also heavy, so we do whatever makes the most sense to us. It's like being a little isolated. It's probably better that we're not getting too homogenized. Being from the Pacific Northwest, we're all transplants, but we all had an appreciation for a lot of heavy music that came out of Seattle in the '90s. Karp, Soundgarden, Nirvana, Mudhoney, Tad, Unwound and bands from Olympia were influences on all of us. That, more than the current state of music, affects our sound.
What's one thing that you want to keep holding onto throughout all of Red Fang's music?
We had a little talk about this the other day. One of the songs—the Christina Aguilera one—has a guitar part in it that we said three years ago, we never would have played this but if the song is awesome, it can be a Red Fang song. It doesn't have to sound a particular way. As far as being in the band, the requirement is that we're enjoying what we're doing. We don't have any financial or popularity goals, we just want to have fun.
On the flip side of that, what do you want to see change?
I honestly can't think of anything that we want to change, except for if we got some awesome free amps. [Laughs] If Orange [Amplifiers] wanted to give us a bunch of free gear, we'd be happy to use it.
