by Jordan Michael (@jordwhyjames)
We don’t always get closure, but we deserve closure. Whether it was a failed relationship, a lost job, or death of a loved one, seeking finality is necessary. To be able to fully let go, we must understand and accept why, going beyond imposed limitations.
In These Arms Are Snakes’ case, it took twelve years for the Seattle institution to close the door on what is undoubtedly one of the weirdest and wildest catalogs in punk rock. For good reason, TAAS was never nailed into any genre classification. Some songs are danceable, some are scary, and some are strange. In many instances, the songs are all of the above at once. TAAS is not for everybody, but their crazed rock ‘n’ roll connects with many.
photo credit: Shayla Martin
“A lot of people think it won’t be up their alley, but that winds up not being the case,” says bassist and baritone guitar player Brian Cook, zooming in from home a day before leaving for Denver for TAAS’ first of three reunion dates in June. “I had so many friends on our last album [Tail Swallower & Dove from 2008] say, ‘Oh, I thought I didn’t like you guys, but I actually listened closer and you’re not an emo band.’ We all came back to it and were sort of surprised by a lot of it. These songs are a lot more complicated than any of us remember—a lot more difficult to play. There’s a lot more weirdness to it now.”
In August of 2021, These Arms Are Snakes played Seattle’s classic Neumos. A very well-done recording of the show ended up being posted to YouTube, and it was mind-blowing. Maybe we forgot how crucial TAAS was, but after seeing the band play again, the reconnection came full circle. Listening to their catalog again, the underground sounds hit differently. It seemed less screamo and more psychedelic. On April 15, TAAS released the cohesive compilation, Duct Tape & Shivering Crows, through Suicide Squeeze. A rarity for the ages.
Getting TAAS back together was serendipitous, Cook says. The band—Chris Common (drums), Ryan Frederiksen (guitar, Korg) and Steve Snere (vocals, Korg)—talked about putting the original demo on vinyl, which was in the hands of Jade Tree, a label that was eventually bought out by Epitaph. “Eleven years go by and everyone is in town, wounds are all healed, and we felt up for it. We had odds and ends, vinyl represses on the table, and Neumos offered us a bunch of money to reunite and play. It was a weird point during COVID-19 where everyone was getting vaccinated and things were opening back up.”
Fast forward to Warsaw in Brooklyn on June 18, and These Arms Are Snakes are setting a figurative fire to the large room. The hardcore blues of Young Widows (deserving of their own praise) was a tough act to follow, but TAAS seamlessly took it to another level, shredding and swaying as all the old fans danced and yelled along.
“We’re all in our 40s and still doing this; it requires being weird and self-destructive in some capacity,” says Cook, who plays in Russian Circles, SUMAC, and was part of the metal-mathcore legends Botch. He used to live near Warsaw in Brooklyn. “What a time to be alive. I love Young Widows, we used to tour with them a bunch and having them with us is how it was going to work out. I think Evan [Patterson, lead in Young Widows] had his first alcoholic drink with us… we toured with Breather Resist [Patterson’s first band] when they were straight edge… started touring with Widows… one night, someone was drinking a vodka cranberry backstage and Evan comes up and asks what it is and what does it taste like; he downed the whole thing in one gulp. OK, Evan, you seem to already be good at this [laughs]. The rest is history.”
Originally active from 2002 to 2009, These Arms Are Snakes cross-pollinated in a wide-ranging rock scene. Cook came from Botch, Snere from Kill Sadie, Frederiksen from Nineironspitfire… Common became TAAS’ drummer between Oxeneers and Easter.
“It was a weird era, we were coming out of the 90s, which was a formative time,” says Cook, who started attending shows in 1991 and played in bands shortly after. “The culture back then was more surrounded by Gravity Records [Black Dice, Born Against, Earthless, The Rapture, Unwound] and shit like that. To me, it was an exciting time, and then we got into the first decade of the new millennium and it felt like that stuff was getting polished and commercialized, post-At The Drive-In, and screamo became a thing—we had bands doing a polished take on that stuff… it was weird. We were sort of part of that lineage, but at the same time, we hated all the contemporaries.”
Snere has been a bartender in Seattle for a long time, so long that Cook says that the TAAS vocalist is his own fellowship. Snere used to bartend at Cha Cha Lounge on Pike Street where members of the Murder City Devils, Fastbacks, and 764-HERO worked. TAAS’ odd name probably led to misinterpretation by the music press. Comparable to how you can’t judge a book by its cover, you can’t judge a band by its name. “Exactly,” Cook agrees. “We made some strategic mistakes along the way…when we started, we looked at Murder City Devils and they toured with anyone. We thought the same, as far as not fitting anywhere.”
I rolled out a list of bands for Cook that I assumed TAAS mingled with: Bear vs. Shark, Blood Brothers, Planes Mistaken For Stars, Cave In, Sparta, Fear Before The March of Flames, Genghis Tron, Drive like Jehu, Coathangers, Minus The Bear, This Will Destroy You, Black Mountain, Destruction Unit, Elliott Smith, Hella, Les Savy Fav, Melvins, Past Lives, Narrows…he more or less agreed. There’s tons more.
“We had a lot of peers and friends in those bands,” says Cook. “In the early 2000s, being a rowdy club band was a big thing. A lot of diversity and interconnection. Now, there’s fewer bands, more electronic artists and more DJs. The rock band thing is a lot more genre specific.”
The music TAAS was listening to while they were making records didn’t really add up to who they toured with. “We liked older stuff like Mclusky, Chavez, Drive Like Jehu, Unwound,” says Cook. I interjected with a band called All the Saints, who toured with TAAS and did a split 7’ with them in 2009 for Touch and Go. “We toured with a lot of great bands… All the Saints were our peers, on the same wavelength. They were older, sounded like they lived hard—boozy, disorienting, and not too refined. A little abrasive with a layer of psych… yeah, I guess we’re similar sounding in a way.”
We sit on Unwound for a minute; Cook loves Unwound. When TAAS’ first EP, This Is Meant To Hurt You, came out, Cook says that the local record store filed it under “sounds like Unwound.” Unwound was active from 1991 to 2002, and recently announced reunion dates for next year. “They are a little older than us and more Olympia [Washington] than Seattle. We weren’t trying to sound like anything, but we definitely listened to them. Every person in Unwound does something interesting… you could take out any instrument and it totally changes the dynamic of any song.”
Same could be said for These Arms Are Snakes. Snere is a flamboyant frontman with a raspy yet inviting voice; Cook plays a signature deep tone; Frederiksen’s guitar playing is highly expansive; and Common stomps heavy rhythm with unique beats.
Rediscovering a band you used to love is nostalgic, and getting immersed in the classic tunes could actually make you feel younger. Cook says that the reunion shows aren’t about nostalgia; it is about finding closure from a sudden break up. There’s nothing coming beyond these shows—These Arms Are Snakes played its last show on July 8th at the Echoplex in Los Angeles.
“We broke up abruptly,” Cook says. “We had this idea of a more ceremonious ending, but we basically got to an end of an album cycle [Tail Swallower & Dove] and we were figuring out a next record and getting offers of support tours, but it wasn’t financially feasible… trying to figure out how to move forward, but there really wasn’t moving forward… we were stuck… the resources and energy was dying, we were drained. I stepped away. In the end, we’re always friends, but there was tension in the ranks—I was playing in Russian Circles by then. We were a band of heavy drinkers and that catches up to you in your 30s… you either make changes or it ends poorly.”
These Arms Are Snakes’ last show before its initial split was in the Fall of 2009 at an all ages dry venue in Seattle, “which was tough for us,” says Cook. “There were a million other things going on and the turnout was low. We had been out on tour and we were tired. It was great to be back home, but we had to play this weird, dry venue. A bunch of my equipment took a dump on me, and I couldn’t play like four songs on the setlist, so we limped through the rest of the set and that was it.”
A month later, TAAS got offered a European bus tour, but the band couldn’t afford it. “There wasn’t a proper ending,” Cook says. “We wanted to feel good about how we were playing, but we didn’t really get that chance.”
Eventually landing on Pacific Northwest community favorite Suicide Squeeze ahead of Tail Swallower, TAAS was fortunate enough to have a handful of labels—Touch and Go, Jade Tree, and Suicide Squeeze—excited about their music when they first started out with a couple shows and a demo. “David Dickenson [of Suicide Squeeze] is awesome, but he didn’t have enough resources to sign us back then,” Cook says. “We went with Jade Tree and did two records, then it seemed as if their enthusiasm was waning… resources at Suicide freed up, and Dickenson was excited as much as we were.”
Tail Swallower is an interesting album, but it may not hold a candle to the other two LPs, Oxeneers and Easter. Those first two albums have a similar format—starting with three danceable tracks, then an interlude leading to an epic fifth track, “Your Pearly Whites” and “Child Chicken Play,” respectively. At the June 18th Warsaw show, I yelled for TAAS to play “Your Pearly Whites,” a favorite ballad, but they only teased the beginning. Don’t fuck with Snakes, or Widows for that matter.
“It’s funny because Easter got ignored for its uneven first half,” says Cook, mentioning that some of his favored TAAS songs (“Woolen Heirs” and “Enteric Double”) are on Tail Swallower. “Side B of Easter is weird prog with weird ideas… as far as those Tail Swallower songs go, those are two songs we always wanted to do and we finally did it. But the whole second side, I do not revisit it much, it is uneven.”
If Cook is ever listening to TAAS, it’s Easter or Tail, not Oxeneers or This Is Meant To Hurt You. “There is a weird cut off somewhere—the music feels so old like I don’t remember doing it, or being written by another human,” he says; he can’t really listen to Botch anymore. We start talking about what it means to listen to your bands’ music frequently. “I have heard different takes on it. I want to listen to it, it is something I worked on, and I wrote music that I like, but you work on it so much that you don’t want to hear it for a while after you’re done.”
TAAS covered the whole era of its catalog during the summer run of five shows; Cook is not trying to poo-poo on any of the catalog. “It all has its place—it is funny going through it all. Like the EP, I would never write a song like that now… I now wonder how we even wrote that.”
At the end of the day, These Arms Are Snakes carried the grimy punk ethos; if a band has that, not much else matters. “We did an early tour with Hot Water Music, Lawrence Arms and another screamo band,” says Cook. Lawrence were L.A. pop punk, HWM was Gainesville melodic hardcore, and then us… all different, but we’re all haggard, gross punk dudes that drink too much and want to be rowdy—we bonded over that. The other band was a little younger, felt more moneyed and labeled, had a tour manager. Sonically, closer to us, but it doesn’t feel punk at all.”
Much of that 2000s punk era was more about a mindset, not what genre you played, Cook says. “Labels were swooping in and paying for Warped Tour or a full spread in Alternative Press and all that—the whole industry that had money, and it was weird, not really us. However, we might be partially responsible.”
In current times, the necessary steps to sustain a punk band are a lot harder. “I think you can do it, but it is tough,” says Cook, who is involved in enough music playing to be OK; he has a back catalog that sells. “People like buying my bands’ t-shirts, and I supplement other things… I make it work, but if I was starting out right now with the crazy inflation and high gas prices, I don’t know.”
Touring is where the money is, and Cook says TAAS always broke even. “Making money off music in the 90s was forbidden; Kurt Cobain killed himself for being lucrative. In the 2000s, you were allowed to make a living as a touring artist. Right now, touring is difficult, but there is more of an understanding and empathy toward artists. You have to be a patron on some level.”
Music is just like life, it is always evolving and going through obstacles. “You should do it because you enjoy it,” says Cook. “Not for dollar amounts or fan levels.” That is the most important thing about TAAS: they fucking love music. The band played fifteen songs in June at Warsaw, and every minute was exhilarating. Zywiec tall cans were flying, people were flailing, and Snere was being his lovable, annoying self.
“You never want a band you dedicated so many years of your life to to end on a bad note,” Cook concludes. “You wanna go out on a high note, feeling like it built up to something.”