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Hot Snakes
AUDIT IN PROGRESS
(Swami)

The third album from San Diego’s Hot Snakes is also their best, though the band’s plan of attack hasn’t much changed since their 2000 debut, Automatic Midnight: the airtight rhythm section still propels the minor-key rhythmic riffing of the half-distorted guitars like a freight liner, and Rick Froberg still can’t (or just won’t) write a vocal melody. But Audit in Progress finds Froberg and Hot Snakes’ other principal songwriter and guitarist, John Reis (of Rocket from the Crypt), further honing a craft that they’ve been working on together since their first collaboration, Pitchfork, in the mid ’80s, and later in the seminal post-hardcore band Drive like Jehu. They distill the rhythmically and structurally complex songs of Jehu, complete with mindfuck meter changes and noisy guitar experimentation, into two- and three-minute blasts infused with a hint of the cocksure psychobilly punk attitude of Rocket from the Crypt. It’s not revelatory, since the songs on the band’s first two albums are in a similar mode. But there are numerous moments — the addictive guitar melody in "Plenty for All" and the pulse-accelerating ending of "Reflex," for instance — that grab you and shake you in a way that Hot Snakes’ previous efforts didn’t.

BY WILL SPITZ


Issue Date: January 7 - 13, 2005
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