"I guess your head bleeds way more than any other part of your body," deadpans Ryan Frederiksen, "so it wasn't nearly as bad as it looked."
The oft-injured These Arms Are Snakes.
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Great American Music Hall
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The lanky, longhaired guitarist for These Arms Are Snakes is having a bit of a laugh at the expense of singer Steve Snere as he thinks back to a show in Washington, D.C., during the quartet's late-summer tour. Seems that Frederiksen -- while caught up in the closed-eyed bliss of the punk-rock moment -- got the urge to swing his guitar around wildly on the club's cramped stage. Feeling a sharp knock, he assumed he'd bashed his Les Paul against the low ceiling. But after glancing upward to find the ceiling far out of reach, he looked to his right and saw Snere stumbling around in a daze, blood pouring from the side of his skull, before hitting the floor.
"There was blood everywhere, and I had this big dent in my head," Snere recalls, a strangely cheerful tone in his voice. "I finished the song and then someone came up onstage and checked me out real quick. We only played like two or three more songs and it was all right; I felt pretty lightheaded and had to sit down for the rest of it. It was just that I've heard all those stories about bands that finish their set no matter what, and I didn't wanna be that one dude, y'know? But it was OK. I didn't need surgery or anything."
Normally, Snere doesn't need any help from Frederiksen or his other two bandmates -- bassist/keyboardist Brian Cook and drummer Ben Verellen -- in jeopardizing his well-being during their gigs. In fact, it's his own complete disregard for personal safety that's played at least some part in establishing TAAS as a phenomenal, must-see live act in the two years since it formed in Seattle. Though the friendly, baby-faced singer isn't exactly the epitome of intimidation during casual conversation, showtime is a whole different story.
When Snere saunters onto a stage, he wears the countenance of a boxer who's already a few rounds into a title fight: antsy, assured, and angrily awoken by a couple jabs to the nose. Then, almost immediately after the Snakes plow into their aggressively jagged, post-hardcore roar, Snere launches himself into the crowd; soon, he'll be prowling the back of the room, climbing up poles and exploring the rafters, dangling precariously from pipes and cables, or sticking his face into wires that could potentially electrocute him. He's survived to this point, although at 23 he's already got two bum shoulders that'd say "fuck you very much" if they could talk. But, says Snere, it's been his performance m.o. since he began singing in bands in his native Minneapolis at the age of 14.
"We'd play shows with these wild hardcore bands and you'd always try to top your friends with the crazy things you'd do, like diving into drum sets and jumping off speakers and stuff like that. So that's just kinda followed me, it's what I've always done. When I'm doing it now I don't really think about it, and it's kinda like being a blackout drunk in that the next day you're like, 'Oh shit, what did I do?' It's fun, though, so why not?"
Of course, that kind of over-the-top recklessness can get old real quick if the music's no good -- you can always stay home and watch Fear Factor if you want to see people put themselves in harm's way for shits and giggles. But These Arms Are Snakes' live sound is as riveting and kinetic as its frontman, a maelstrom of tension, noise, and menace that rarely neglects the power of a great melody, a body-jerking rhythm, or a killer riff.
And just as Snere uses the stage only occasionally as a base of operations, the Snakes don't feel tethered to one strict musical form, as evidenced by the band's recent full-length debut, Oxeneersor The Lion Sleeps When Its Antelope Go Home (more on that unwieldy title in a bit). There is a general framework: Songs like "Greetings From the Great North Woods" and the standout "Big News" possess punky, clutching guitar lines that twang while spraying bits of gravel and broken glass; clenched-mouth bass and drums that push forward like a stalker seriously contemplating violating a restraining order; and Snere's vocals, yelped and howled in unhinged fashion, not entirely unlike Guy Picciotto of Fugazi's voicebox freakouts.
But "Angela's Secret" and "La Stanza Bianca" attack from a slightly different direction, bringing in distorted synth growls à la mid-period Girls Against Boys, jungle-ish polyrhythms, and mathy ax-handling as Snere pops his top with full-bore screams. The eight-minute-plus, space-prog epic "Gadget Arms" -- with its drone-and-feedback-laden ebbs and flows -- is a shoegazer's dream, exactly the kind of tune for which Boss makes boards to hold 15 guitar pedals. And the brief instrumental interlude "Tracing," formed entirely from mournful organs and synths, has the kind of grim melody you'd hear at an old Soviet state funeral.
Having already explored essentially straight-ahead punk and hardcore as collective veterans of Botch, Kill Sadie, nineironspitfire, and Roy, the members of These Arms Are Snakes are intent on busting out of those genres' usual straitjackets; before Oxeneers, they did it on last year's introductory EP, This Is Meant to Hurt You.
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