Red Host

"It's just before midnight on a Monday and the Press Club is packed with twenty-somethings, who are standing together in rapt attention, swaying to the music of local headliners Red Host. Singer Chelsea Wolfe's hauntingly seductive vocals bloom into full-bodied howls, and her rich tone rides atop the band's Queens of the Stone Age-esque rhythmic distortions, driving straight through the P.A.'s speakers to what feels like the crowd's single pulsating heart.." - MM

"...The CD is a beautiful suggestion of what lies ahead, while giving us something to listen to here and now...Live the songs took on an even greater intensity. That's what we have to look forward to from Red Host." - Jerry Perry

"Even before I heard the low hum of Red Host's amps warming up I felt something. As they started into their set, I realized what that "something" was, it was swagger. Their sound was rock and roll tales of pain, torment, and the yearnings of otherwise healthy hearts..

The forceful combo of Jess' drumming and Ian's bass playing were a perfect match for Chelsea's slow yet tremendous builds and breaks.

Bands like this are few and far between. Something the hipsters, the rockers and "prove it to me" crowd all bobbed their heads to. It was great rock music from a great rock band." - Eric Davis

"Saturday night brought a three-trio lineup at Old Ironsides, all of them fronted by women..it was the evening’s headliner, Red Host, which threw this humble scribe for a serious loop.

Ahem. Now, I’ve rotted my mind in front of enough television sets over several decades, much of that time watching such stellar sitcom fare as Get Smart. Part of that show’s appeal was Maxwell Smart’s sidekick, Agent 99, played by the lovely Barbara Feldon. Good enough. But take Agent 99, have artist Charles Burns redraw her as a blank-eyed beauty who’s just emerged from a crypt to avenge a lifetime of evil deeds, place a smoking Telecaster into her hands and plug it into a Marshall amp, and you pretty much have Red Host frontwoman Chelsea Wolfe.

Joined onstage by an animated bassist, Ian Bone, and a drummer, Jess Gowrie, whose ferocity belied her compact frame, the statuesque Wolfe whipped through a set of high-volume rock noise that married the sonic molten-lava onslaught of Sabbath-sourced stoner rock to a more modern framework—one informed by such icons as P.J. Harvey, the Jesus and Mary Chain and others.

Wolfe’s voice may not be a classic metal sound, but it has a natural heft that soars over a wall of guitar noise with lupine grace. Color me utterly smitten. Check out www.myspace.com/redhost (or www.myspace.com/chelseawolfe to hear the singer in a completely different context)." - Jackson Griffith