ALBUM REVIEW: Duct Tape & Shivering Crows – These Arms Are Snakes
Cult heroes THESE ARMS ARE SNAKES left quite the impression during their short time on this earth. Over just seven years, they blazed a trail all of their own, releasing three quality full-lengths that sought out the many diverse and progressive corners of post-hardcore and beyond. They called it a day in 2009, and have played just a few reunion shows since then. Naturally, rumours of new material have followed them around ever since, but Duct Tape & Shivering Crows isn’t exactly that. Instead, it’s a collection of B-sides and rarities, these running right across the band’s visionary seven-year tenure. That may disappoint some, but it does provide a pretty comprehensive overview of the many facets of a fascinating career.
As a record, Duct Tape… runs in reverse chronological order, starting with tracks taken from the band’s 2008 splits with TROPICS and RUSSIAN CIRCLES. All of these have seen the light of day before – as has most of this album – but they still serve as quality primers of much of what TAAS did so well. Meet Your Mayor gets straight to business – a high-energy, noisy offering fronted by Steve Snere’s typically manic vocals. Camera Shy follows as an early highlight, its lumbering bass and winding rhythms providing a solid backdrop for Ryan Frederiksen’s spacey leads. Trix rounds out the opening trifecta in similar fashion, mixing angular intensity with a heavy, swaggering groove.
TAAS deliver a few more tracks like these across Duct Tape…‘s 47-minute runtime, but not before they offer up a couple of covers – both released posthumously in 2014. First up is Energy Drink And The Long Way Home, originally by garage rockers LOST SOUNDS. The band play it pretty faithfully to the original, albeit with a tooled-up production job and even more bursting energy. The same is largely true of the significantly better known Heart Shaped Box by NIRVANA which follows. It leans heavily on the original’s sense of menace, while adding throbbing electronics to the song’s verses. Also of note are the tracks from the band’s 2004 collaborative EP with their then Hydra Head labelmates HARKONEN. These reveal TAAS at their most chaotic, tearing through tight runtimes with wild and reckless abandon.
While not quite new material, perhaps the real treat for die-hard fans comes in the record’s last four tracks. Believed to be the only unreleased TAAS material left, these are taken from the band’s very first demo – a record which would go on to inform four-fifths of their debut EP This Is Meant To Hurt You. As expected, the production’s a bit rough and raw here, but it’s not a total mess either. If anything, it lends these tracks more of an urgent and punky edge than their eventual successors. Everything’s just a little more in the red, with Frederiksen’s guitar feeling particularly in your face throughout. Much like the EP, Run It Through The Dog is probably the stand-out – a lengthy, dynamic and intensely psychedelic cut. Meanwhile, The Blue Rose changes most of all, this one adding extra spoken elements to its trippy mid-section.
Given the nature of this release, it’s perhaps surprising just how cohesive it feels. In arranging the tracks reverse chronologically, THESE ARMS ARE SNAKES have ensured there’s never a super jarring shift, even if the demos which close the record do feel pretty far removed from the more mature version of the band we hear at the beginning. It’s probably more for collectors than anyone else, but could also provide a solid career-spanning introduction to the uninitiated.
Rating: 8/10
Duct Tape & Shivering Crows is set for release on April 15th via Suicide Squeeze Records.
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