About
GASFANG are an American rock band from Huntington Beach, California, known for creating a dark, cinematic sound they define as Pulp Rock. Formed in 2018, the band blend the raw energy of rock and garage rock with psychedelic textures, vintage soul, rhythm and blues, and the dramatic atmosphere of classic crime and thriller soundtracks.
The band consists of Vince Harlow on lead vocals and keyboards, Dean J. Mercer on guitar, Elliot Davis on bass, and Randy Navarro on drums.
Together, they create music that feels like the soundtrack to a forgotten midnight movie: tense, stylish, unpredictable, and charged with atmosphere. Their songs combine sharp guitar riffs, hypnotic keyboards, melodic basslines, and tightly controlled rhythms with expressive vocals and richly cinematic arrangements.
GASFANG draw inspiration from American rock music of the 1960s and 1970s, psychedelic rock, garage rock, soul, and rhythm and blues. These influences are reshaped through a darker and more visual approach, creating songs that move between driving rock grooves, smoky soul passages, unsettling instrumental sections, and sudden bursts of dramatic tension.
Their music often evokes deserted highways, neon-lit motels, coastal towns after dark, police radios, dangerous encounters, and stories where nothing is quite what it seems. Every track is built to suggest images, characters, and situations, allowing the listener to enter a world that feels both familiar and strangely unsettling.
The band’s cinematic identity is also influenced by vintage crime, horror, and thriller soundtracks, including the atmospheric experimentation of Italian composers such as Ennio Morricone and Claudio Simonetti. Rather than directly imitating traditional film music, GASFANG absorb its sense of suspense, rhythm, and visual storytelling into a contemporary rock format.
Their sound can be energetic and immediate, but it also leaves space for tension, silence, and atmosphere. Funk-inspired basslines, restrained guitar passages, vintage keyboards, and sudden rhythmic shifts give their music a distinctive narrative quality.
GASFANG make music for dark rooms, late-night drives, underground clubs, and imaginary films that may never have existed. Their songs are equally suited to thriller, horror, crime, action, and high-tension cinema, combining the physical impact of a live rock band with the visual power of a film score.
Background
GASFANG were formed in Huntington Beach, California, in 2018 by four musicians who shared a fascination with vintage records, cult cinema, crime stories, psychedelic music, and the dramatic possibilities of sound.
Although the city is commonly associated with surf culture, sunshine, and Southern California punk, the band were more interested in what happened after sunset. They were drawn to empty streets, ageing theatres, late-night diners, industrial areas, and the darker side of the California dream.
Vince Harlow initially began writing short instrumental pieces on vintage keyboards, imagining them as themes for nonexistent films. Guitarist Dean J. Mercer added distorted riffs, tremolo-heavy melodies, and abrasive garage-rock textures, while bassist Elliot Davis introduced the warm grooves of soul and rhythm and blues. Drummer Randy Navarro completed the band’s sound with a precise but highly expressive style influenced by classic rock, funk, and cinematic percussion.
Their early rehearsals often began with a visual idea rather than a conventional song structure. A car moving through the desert at night, a motel room with an open door, a police chase, or a figure disappearing into the fog could become the starting point for an entire composition.
This approach gradually developed into what the band called Pulp Rock: a musical language combining rock, garage rock, psychedelic music, soul, rhythm and blues, and vintage soundtrack composition.
The term reflects both the band’s sound and their storytelling style. Like classic pulp fiction and exploitation cinema, GASFANG’s music is direct, atmospheric, colourful, and slightly dangerous. Their songs often suggest fragmented stories populated by drifters, criminals, detectives, damaged lovers, unreliable witnesses, and people trying to escape their past.
While some tracks are built around vocals and strong melodic hooks, others develop like instrumental scenes, using repetition, dynamics, and tonal shifts to create suspense. Keyboards may resemble an old horror soundtrack, while guitars move between surf-inspired lines, garage distortion, psychedelic effects, and soul-driven rhythm parts.
Their music retains the warmth and physical character of recordings from the 1960s and 1970s, but it is presented through a contemporary production style that highlights detail, depth, and cinematic scale.
GASFANG are not interested in nostalgia for its own sake. They use vintage musical influences as raw material for a sound that feels personal and visually immediate. Each track is conceived as a miniature world, complete with its own atmosphere, tension, and implied narrative.
At the centre of the band is the belief that rock music can do more than accompany a story: it can create one. Through Pulp Rock, GASFANG transform riffs, rhythms, voices, and instrumental textures into scenes that unfold inside the listener’s imagination.
