Copious Notes

Red's Michael Barnes plays to a cheering crowd at the 2010 Ichthus Festival.

More: Click here to listen to our chat with Red’s Anthony Armstrong.

In 2006, the band Red released its debut album, hoping someone would listen.

The group wasn’t even on a label at the time, but slowly people tuned in to the hard-rock sounds of the disc, which spawned the hits Breathe Into Me, Break Me Down and a couple of other chart-toppers. The album ended up nominated for the Grammy Award for best rock or rap gospel record.

Five years later, Red doesn’t release albums quietly.

Quickly after the Feb. 1 release of Until We Have Faces, Red was hovering near No. 1 on iTunes’ sales charts, and the band was booked on TBS’s Conan and NBC’s Tonight Show With Jay Leno, national television debuts for the band.

Red guitarist Anthony Armstrong.

“We can’t even believe the numbers that are coming in,” guitarist Anthony Armstrong said a few days after the album’s release. “Some amazing things are happening.”

For Central Kentucky fans of Red, one of those things is a slot on the Winter Jam tour, which comes to Rupp Arena on March 12. The bill is topped by the resurgent Newsboys, the David Crowder Band, Kutless, Francesca Battistelli, Jason Castro, Chris August, Sidewalk Prophets, KJ-52 and tour hosts NewSong.

But Red is easily the hottest band at the moment on the show, like many other bands successfully crossing the line between mainstream and Christian venues.

“We try to play the same way whether we are playing in a church or a bar,” Armstrong said at last summer’s Ichthus Festival. “We want people who see us to say, ‘Those guys are the same no matter where they play. They’re not putting on an act or trying to hide anything.’”

One thing Red showed very well at Ichthus, where it was the Friday evening main stage opener for Skillet, was that it could play to a huge crowd — sort of like the one it will see in Rupp Arena, where last year’s Winter Jam drew 14,756 fans.

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Red guitar player Anthony Armstrong. Copyrighted photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

If you think the rise of Red‘s career, playing the main stage at Ichthus on only its second album, was pretty fast, you are not alone.

“It feels pretty fast to us,” guitar player Anthony Armstrong said backstage at Ichthus on Friday. “The past four years have been a whirlwind.”

Ichthus alone has been an example. They first came in 2007 playing the Deep End Stage with their first album, The End of Silence. That album ballooned, and Red returned to the Main Stage the next year, closing out an afternoon. This year, with hit album No. 2, Innocence and Instinct, Red was back opening the evening card for Skillet.

Bassist Randy Armstrong

And fans crammed around the stage like the were Skillet – 15-year veterans with a catalog of hit albums – or something.

“We know there are bands out there who have been around longer than us with more ablums who haven’t made it to this level,” Armstrong said.

Drummer Joe Rickard knows one of those bands well, The Wedding, which he used to be part of and says he still has tremendous respect for.

“It’s a blessing,” he said. “This is somehow part of God’s scheme … to spread the word.”

Bassist Randy Armstrong wants to be something else: an inspiration to young music fans like all the guys in the band were a few years ago. It’s tattooed on his arm: Inspired.

Red is guitarist Anthony Armstrong, vocalist Michael Barnes, guitarist Jasen Rauch and bassist Randy Armstrong.

Review: Red – Innocence & Instinct

Nashville-based Red hasn’t made any secret of epic intentions for its second studio effort, Innocence & Instinct. Press materials for the album tout Dante’s Inferno as one of the primary inspirations for the album about trying to live a Godly life in a Godless world.

And between torrents of grinding and racing guitars, swelling strings and well-timed somber passages, the quartet mostly succeeds in delivering an album that should vault it from darlings of hard rock adherents to one of the top acts in and out of the Christian rock. With its 2006 debut, End of Silence, Red already forged a mainstream presence touring with acts such as Seether and Papa Roach as well as Christian-market stars such as Third Day and Switchfoot.

That should all grow with Innocence & Instinct, particularly considering Red has already established its ability to deliver live.

Producer Rob Graves orchestrated quite the sonic journey here, starting with the lead-off track and single Fight Inside. It’s one of several tracks that show there are many ways to build an epic: you can do it in the crunch and run of Anthony Armstrong and Jasen Rauch’s guitars, the flight of strings or Michael Barnes’ voice equally skilled at soaring (Mystery of You) and growling (Out from Under). They may be hard rockers, but they take the best of many forms, also evidenced by an emotional cover of Duran Duran’s Ordinary World.

Innocence & Insitinct impresses with its power, but the real reason it succeeds is it doesn’t beat you over the head with it.