These Arms Are Snakes - The Feast of Easter

"I'll try and keep it fresh," asserts Brian Cook - former Botch bassist and founding member of post-hardcore quartet These Arms Are Snakes. Going by the state of his outfit's recent longplayer, Easter, he's not lying either. Although, rather than lift a poisoned chalice, Cook soberly suggests that there's nothing brand new about twisting the high tempo two-tone meets Fugazi template into another shape. And so what if they do throw in a little blues for good measure? They do hail from Hendrix country, after all.

"I certainly don't think that we're reinventing the wheel musically and I don't think that should necessarily be anyone's goal as a musician. We're all big music nerds who are always kind of digging around. One moment we'll be thinking 'let's write something that sounds like a David Lynch movie,' the next we'll say 'let's just write something that sounds like a really heavy, doomy prog band' or something."

A bit coy then, and in summing up the momentary diversions that their sound has come to be applauded for, Cook merely suggests: "we kind of have a short attention span." On the strength of this chat, the Snakes seem largely unconcerned with the self-proclaimed minutia of their own music. In fact, the way Brian tells it, Easter is more an ethical manifestation to express the idea that something's not quite right about the punk movement, or rather, that something alien is entirely too present.

"I think it's telling to see how prominent rock or more specifically punk music has become a part of the cultural landscape; to see this very conservative, Christian, very safe and obedient sort of mindset creeping in and becoming so accepted. I think it's really weird that all these people who are playing punk music - or at least they call it punk music - are, for now, not having difficulty reconciling a lot of the punk ethics with the Christian ethics."

It's a familiar story, but a sad one all the same. The goalposts have changed; a new purpose has snuck in, incognito, as pop to replace the old non-conformist sentiment made famous by a legion of fanatics. Although, Cook is quick to point out that they don't hate the player, they do however miss the once raging passion of the game.

"I don't want to diss on beliefs or a desire to make a certain kind of music but I think it definitely shows that having an aggressive sound now isn't synonymous with necessarily having a very radical or forward thinking philosophy. It's just a sound."

Of course, lamenting yesterday will usually get you nowhere but, then again, a few bands like this quartet might be just the adrenaline shot that a jaded genre needs to be resuscitated. TAAS, along with the likes of Blood Brothers and Big Business represent a new breed of bands from the same north western hotspot to have sent us Soundgarden, Mudhoney, Tad - and who could forget those hair metal renegades: Queensryche?

So besides identifying a recent penchant for placing subservient punk bands up on the pulpit in its numerous churches, what new musical strengths does Cook see in his local community, some 15 years after the gold rush?

"I think Seattle's kind of its own little microcosm in some ways and I don't believe it necessarily had anything to recover from. Every so often it'll pop into the limelight, whether it's a case of Nirvana or Death Cab For Cutie or on the smaller spectrum of it, a band like Blood Brothers, us or Minus the Bear. Every once in a while people take notice and remember."