Sep 23, 2005  |  By: DAN MILLE  | COMMENTS     

GAYS AND LESBIANS play and like all sorts of music, but it’s still rare to hear a gay-inclusive band describe themselves as “art thrashers.”

Such is the case with These Arms are Snakes, which includes gay bass/keyboard player Brian Cook. TAAS’ debut LP “Oxoneers or The Lion Sleeps When Its Antelopes Go Home,” the follow-up to the 2003 “This Is Meant To Hurt You,” is a big, tangled mass of angry guitars and angrier vocals.

TAAS is a hardcore band, meaning if you don’t do angry or if you don’t do loud you won’t enjoy it. Know that coming in. And even if you are open to all their loudness, the vocals and non-melodic nature of the songs might be a turnoff.

MUSICALLY, TAAS IS successful in conveying the band’s intensity. Ryan Frederiksen’s guitars are dark and aggressive, and the band assembles an impressive array of sounds.

Its members like to deluge listeners with sound, putting their guitars on overdrive with keyboards adding extra fullness to the sound.

There are pretty much two sonic tones on the record: loud intensity and the quiet parts building up to the loud intensity. The songs aren’t even structured in a verse-chorus-verse format, where tension builds before the loud payoff. TAAS just seems comfortable in its groove of thrashing rock.

One of the biggest problems with “Oxoneers” is the vocal delivery of singer Steve Snere. He rarely departs from his one tone, a furious snarl, and he never really conveys any memorable melodies.

He’s definitely got the rage thing down, but his performance is so monotonous that the anger constantly spewed seems mundane after a few songs. Perhaps that’s just to be expected within the genre, but it makes the music somewhat overbearing.

An example of a typical TAAS track would be the album’s third song, “Big News.” It’s a furious rant against the five-day workweek, propelled by a jagged guitar line and given life by Snere’s howling.

Given the intensity of his lyrics and the drama of his delivery, one might think that he was addressing bigger subjects than his main target: urban isolation. He frequently rails against living the life of a worker bee and being cooped up in an office, working for other people.

Despite this, sometimes when the drama gets too intense, you want to shake him and say, “Look, everybody has a crappy job. We get over it.”

Admittedly, he’s doing more than complaining about how much it sucks to operate a switchboard, but the lyrics can be a bit obvious to anyone who sits at a desk all day.

The songwriting isn’t outright bad, though. Snere has a nice ear for rhyme and frequently comes up with some compelling imagery. However, the words sometimes seem like they were lifted from a high school literary magazine; they are rife with youthful angst and anger.

The flavor of Snere’s songwriting can be found in this cute couplet from “La Stanza Bianca”: “Rabid mouths and prone suicidals/ Morphine injections for crazed homicidals.”

It’s not light stuff, but TAAS don’t seem to be too interested in making light music.

DESPITE THE BAND’S musical proficiency, some tracks are a bit unbearable. The mostly instrumental “Gadget Arms” is an eight-minute and eight-second collection of noise that definitely wears out its welcome.

If a song lasts longer than six minutes, there better be a good reason for it. “Gadget Arms” probably has enough content for three, maybe four, at best.

This is not a melodic record, but the band doesn’t lack an ear for melody. One of the best tracks is “Tracing,” an organ-driven segue that only lasts a minute. It’s a refreshing detour from the constant loudness, but it effectively evokes a sense of tranquility in the listener as it leads into the brooding “Your Pearly Whites.”

And as a completely unrelated side note, the CD’s booklet has some interesting artwork, mainly photos of glazed-looking hipster types, some of them naked.