The Distillers: Coral Fang : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

If Nirvana had been led by a chick singer, Bleach might have sounded like the Distillers' Coral Fang. On its third album, the Los Angeles quartet rips through a series of punk songs that balance throat-shredding, brain-rattling intensity with an undercurrent of sadness and vulnerability. These brief punk ditties are catchy but not cookie-cutter; "The Hunger" swings and sways on the back of an acoustic guitar part before the calm is disrupted by singer Brody Armstrong shrieking, "Don't go!" On the breakneck "Die on a Rope," the boys in the band chant "way-oh, way-oh" in unison alongside Armstrong and end up sounding like Nineties indie outfit Rocket From the Crypt.

Seven of the eleven songs on Coral Fang mention blood, seven mention death, and references to things like biting, ripping and beheading abound. But in light of Armstrong's separation from her husband, Tim Armstrong of Rancid, it's hard not to hear Coral Fang as a breakup album. Behind the cryptic goriness and the veneer of rage on the opening track, "Drain the Blood," there is a bruised and bandaged heart. "I'm living on shattered faith/The kind that likes to restrict your breath," Armstrong sings at the outset, and then spends forty-five minutes proving she really means it.

JENNY ELISCU
(RS 934, October 30, 2003)