Mon Nov 1, Neumo's, 9:30 pm, $12 adv.
"I've been waking up a lot earlier than I usually do--I'm contemplating taking up fishing," says Hot Snakes guitarist John Reis. It's not that Reis has become particularly pastoral in recent days, he's just severely jet-lagged from the band's recent trip to England. "It was the first time we went over there. We were supposed to go a couple of years ago, but we had to cancel, so there was a little bit of anticipation."
A little bit? Reis' modesty is admirable, but if England's fan base even remotely resembles the U.S. indie underground, then it's safe to say kids in London were probably stepping over each other to get tickets to that show.
For the uninitiated, Hot Snakes are the direct descendents of legendary punk band Drive Like Jehu, a ferociously distinctive post-hardcore act that enjoyed more success after their dissolution than during their brief career in the early '90s. Revered for their intricate approach to composition, disarmingly odd time signatures, and the positively brutal delivery of Reis and co-frontman Rick Froberg, Jehu was a band whose broad influence can be heard in a wide spectrum of contemporary bands, from New York's Les Savy Fav to local artists like the Lights and the New Mexicans.
"Drive Like Jehu was a band that, when we were playing, not a whole lot of people knew about us or were digging on our sounds," says Reis. "I think our reputation definitely grew after we stopped playing, which I think was part of the initial appeal of Hot Snakes, although what we are doing is different..."
Yes and no. Hot Snakes contain the two key ingredients that made Drive Like Jehu so legitimately renowned: Reis' menacing, bone-rattling guitar lines and Froberg's more circular, hypnotic approach to the same instrument, paired perfectly with a blistering vocal bark that somehow sneers without sounding snotty. But the complex, lengthy song arrangements are a thing of the past; Hot Snakes stick to short, aggressive spurts of noise--a truncation of sound that Reis clearly embraces more than his math-rocking past.
"Jehu was sort of greater than the sum of its parts, in some regards," he explains. "It was so fiercely democratic that by the time everyone got hold of an idea, it no longer resembled its original form. We were making music that was kind of beyond what we probably even wanted to do [laughs]. But it was what it was."
Talking with Reis about his formative musical years illuminates how such an evolution could take place. "Damaged by Black Flag was a real eye opener," recalls Reis. "I thought it was music made by crazed maniacs--I never thought that noise like that could be beaten out of instruments and yelled into a mic. It forever changed the way I looked at music."
It was his introduction to the MC5 that sent Reis on a historical reconnaissance mission to discover the black artists who shaped his early adulthood. "When I turned 17, I got turned on to the MC5. And from that, I started investigating stuff that they were into, like jazz and more black music. By the time I graduated from high school, I wasn't really even listening to punk rock anymore."
Reis eventually rediscovered punk rock, and while his affection for jazz obviously informed the sprawling nature of Jehu's work (and to a lesser degree, his other band, Rocket from the Crypt), his roots are still firmly planted in a devotion to the aggressive, angular shards of guitar and abrupt, propulsive cadence that characterize the Snakes' latest offering, Audit in Progress, released on Reis' own Swami Records. While their previous two releases, Automatic Midnight and Suicide Invoice, hinted somewhat at Jehu's complex past, Audit is 100 percent breakneck tempos and breathless, antagonistic vocals. With the notable exception of the surprisingly melodic, nearly poppy closing track, it's almost exhausting to listen to.
"Musically, I think it was just the fact that we were so energized--we hadn't done this in a while and we were getting to go back to the ideas we had stock- piled in our downtime," explains Reis. "We just gravitated toward the more energetic songs. We definitely didn't say, 'Yeah, let's go make a balls-to-the-wall, extreme record'--it was just where we were at."
