These Arms Are Snakes is an upcoming band signed to Jade Tree and made up of members from Botch and Kill Sadie. Their first release only contains five songs but each one of them is truly astonishing. They often play at full throttle, tend to build impressive walls of guitar and throw down an impressive energy. They sound like Trail of Dead going to evening courses because the teacher is Fugazi. As opposed to their heredity Botch, These Arms Are Snakes never yields to over-violent hardcore but focuses on energy as At The Drive-In used to do. The singer’s style oscillates between all these aforementioned bands. He whispers, talks, sings or screams. Does that give you a glimpse of the guy’s abilities ?

These five songs will inevitably ring a bell in a musically learned listener. Impossible not to think of Fugazi, Trail of Dead and At The Drive-In but thanks to daring song structures they sometimes manage to spruce their music up, decorating with other atmospheres. In some respects you could mention Sonic Youth but there is nothing amazing since our NY favourites have been a major influence on Trail of Dead. In ‘Run it through the Dog’ the ending is inclining towards post-rock, being reminiscent of GYBE. In ‘The Blue Rose’ there is a cathartic dimension coming from Faith No More and/or RATM. The pernicious effect of mentioning bands as points of reference is to make the band under review appear as totally devoid of personality. ‘Diggers of Ditches Everywhere’ does not escape from the previous remarks (and by the way wouldn’t have paled in comparison on The Argument) but seems to be the song in which the band’s original aspect reaches its highest point, the one in which the group manages to insufflate personal ideas that come over their influences.

As times goes by it naturally becomes more and more difficult to go beyond song-writing boundaries and consequently these past few years the most interesting bands are often those whose influences are great and that manage to get over them (eg this year The Constantines). This release is a nice blend of blistering noisy-rock and emo and undeniably makes you wish to hearing from them soon…

-SEB WOOd

/nov 15th 2003/