If you haven’t heard of Red before, they are a great band to check out. Great rock with amazing strings. Great lyrics. Since getting my record player for Christmas, I’ve been really getting back into music. Most of my recent favorites have been Americana— one of the last refuges of sex-free, violence-free, and clean-language music— but I still pull out some Demon Hunter and Red a few times a week. It’s good axe-to-the-grindstone music for me.
Well, Red has a new album coming out on February 24th called of Beauty and Rage and did something cool last night with a new service called Show.co. For one hour, they streamed the whole album for free through Show.co. Great, simple interface and a great way to advertise an upcoming release. Get you hooked.
The biggest complaint about their last album, Release the Panic, was the lack of orchestrated strings, leaning more to just rock. To fix that, Red released a mini-album called Release the Panic: Recalibrated last year with more strings. I, personally, love Release the Panic in itself, but also love the old strings. With of Beauty and Rage, the strings are back. Descent and Ascent are pure string gold, and weaved throughout the album are powerful string compositions harking back to their first album, End of Silence.
Red holds a special place in my heart. On February 12th, 2009 my girlfriend and I went to their concert at the Subterranean in Chicago and afterwards, as we walked back to my car, I got down on one knee and proposed. Two years later we got married, an anniversary we’ll be celebrating next month. We’ve seen them twice now in concert, the night we got engaged and a couple years ago at Winter Jam, and are trying to figure out how to see them on tour this year. I’ll likely do a full album review in a few weeks when it comes out.
