Sometimes it takes a while for everything to come together, as it has for Portland’s Red Fang. The members of the veteran sludge-metal crew are well past the point where they’re going to get carded at their local liquor store. But proving that good stuff sometimes happens to those who persevere, 2014 has been pretty great for guitarists David Sullivan and Bryan Giles, singer-bassist Aaron Beam, and drummer John Sherman.

Red Fang’s first two outings—Red Fang (2009) and Murder the Mountains (2011)—made waves in the underground to the point where this year’s Whales and Leeches has attracted the attention of some heavy hitters. The producers at Late Show With David Letterman came calling after the record’s release, the band subsequently making its network debut with a performance of the righteously roiling “Blood Like Cream”.

Rose City royalty Fred Armisen has also thrown his support behind the group. The Portlandia star gets a featured role in the video for—you guessed it—“Blood Like Cream”, in which the Pacific Northwest is overrun by zombies who are, smartly, more interested in beer than human flesh.

Add the fact that Red Fang has a devoted following in Europe, which has enabled it to make frequent swings overseas, and you’ve got a dream job. That’s something Sullivan makes no attempt to deny when he’s reached at home.

“It’s a little bit of a balancing act, but I love it,” the guitarist says enthusiastically. “I’m really happy playing music—I’ve been doing this since I was 19, and I’m 44 now. It’s really great that I get to travel around the world and play in a band. It’s really busy, and there are challenges. I have a girlfriend, two of the band members are married, and Aaron has a kid, so to have time at home is nice. But what we try and do is just keep our tours a little bit shorter. So, yeah, I love, really love it, to the point where I’d rather be doing this than anything else.”

That enthusiasm definitely shows up on Whales and Leeches, a record that’s going to thrill anyone looking for a perfect loud and woozy bookend to Queens of the Stone Age’s immortal Songs for the Deaf. The first thing you notice about the record is that it sounds gloriously warm in an old-school analogue way, for which producer Chris Funk of the Decemberists deserves part of the credit.

“We recorded to tape, and then bounced it into Pro Tools for overdubs and mixing,” Sullivan says. “That’s probably why it sounds the way it does.”

The second thing you might notice is that the guitarists of Red Fang are masters of restraint. Forget shredding like Kirk Hammett or Joe Satriani, Sullivan and Giles are all about groove and texture, their affection for megaton riffage all over bong-boogie delights like “Voices of the Dead” and the bass-bombed “Dawn Rising”.

“I can’t shred like Yngwie Malmsteen,” Sullivan says with a laugh. “I’m impressed by that kind of playing, but I’m not a super-technical guitarist. On-stage we tend to play things really fast—I think it’s the energy and excitement of being on-stage. What happens in the studio—and maybe this is the stoner element—is that we get thinking, ‘This sounds really good if we play it relaxed and slow.’ It’s a conscious effort to play a little slower and little bit mellower than we do on-stage, and that gives it a little more groove. We try and do that live, but it’s tricky because we tend to get all excited and speed everything up.”

Mostly, one assumes, because they are excited about where they are these days.

Red Fang plays Venue on Wednesday (October 8).