Album Review
These Arms Are Snakes
Label: Jade Tree
  • 4/5
Reviewed by Janelle
These Arms Are Snakes (featuring ex-members of Botch, Kill Sadie, and Nineironspitfire) seem to truly be doing their own thing on 'Oxeneers or the Lion Sleeps When Its Antelope Go Home', for to find bands comparable to them is quite hard indeed. The only ones that sort of have a similar style are At the Drive-In or even maybe The Jesus Lizard ヨ for their noisy, heavy, somewhat abrasive, challenging, and gritty style, most notably found on "Big News", the fabulous "Greetings from the Great North Woods", at certain harsher parts of "Angela's Secret" and at the beginning of the organ-heavy "La Stanza Bianca", a song on which frontman Steve Snere repeats, "What is this? Well, this is madness." Indeed, it is! And wonderfully so... Their unique and ridiculously unpredictable brand of post-hardcore is something special, to be sure.

TAAS' finest composition on the album just might be the aforementioned "Greetings" ヨ a really hectic and urgent, disoriented song, which ends with a three-part vocal harmony accompanied solely by a simple drumbeat. Another great track, which might not sound that way on paper, is "Gadget Arms". Here, TAAS truly prove their mettle, as they are still able hold the listener's attention, even during strange, mysterious forays into guitar noise found for the better part of the prolonged basically "instrumental" section, in which save for a few sporadic vocals, is mainly composed of just odd and eerie noises until around the six-minute mark when the vocals come in full-force, more structured instrumentation appears (and remains), and a song can finally be culled from the weirdness. This is just a really cool, druggy composition.

Yet, there are a couple let-downs on 'Oxeneers', as a few tracks acting as interludes seem to be rather extraneous and unnecessary (see "Tracing" and "Oxeneer"). Also a little out of place is the highly emotional, "normal," and quite frankly boring (compared to the rest of the out-of-control record) "Your Pearly Whites".

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