"Working with Silver Snakes was a great time filled with 90's alternative rock riffage and veganism." So sayeth their Mixer and Engineer Roger Camero (No Motiv, The Warriors). Me? I came to them otherwise.
Helen Bach interviewed them as part of the ongoing "5 With A Bullet" column, and anybody that references drunken soundmen pulling a knife on em and Curb Your Enthusiasm on the DVD player, have gotta be pretty damn cool, right?
Well, despite a tour that is getting no closer than Newark, and despite mining a post-grunge rock and roll that is all exploding guitars (but not in a -referencing the band, Live way) and anthems that aren't really, the Los Angeles based bands debut 2011, Portrait Of A Floating World, is a thing to behold indeed.
It has a prog-rock cred under its windshield wiper and on a song like "I Am The Flood" throws riff bombs on top of some of the most powerful drumming around, while the name on the tip of your tongue is Keith Moon, I can hear the batterring ram brilliance of Keith Moon circa Quadrophenia, only with 20 minutes jumps in time. And the Pumpkins maybe circa Gish, the sort of overcooked and overwhelmed sensibility of guitar as harmonic doo dad.
All of Silver Snakes debut has the excitement of a first album, as though there wasn't an idea, a sound, an explosion they wouldn't through at you in their attempt to seduce and beat you into submission. Songs come in acts, birds tweets, tracks flit and start, in waves of power that wash over you like the oceanic metaphors floating across the sea of sound.
Producer Steve Choi (Rx Bandits) claimed "If you look closely, then you'll catch the technical riffs, the breakdowns, the choruses and the unique vision all hiding behind the straight up rock nature of the whole thing." I guess, I can hear the way they break down a track easily enough, but I am not convinced about the rest of it. My biggest problem is what could make them a hugely successful, Alex Astrada's powerful voice just rides roughshod, he brings so much feeling to everything he sings it becomes tiring. This is what we call the Billy Corgan problem. His voice is high and loud, and he seems to be like a drunk driver careening and nearly crashing. Still in control but who knows how long for, on "Dear Midnight" the band seems to be flaying on its metaphor. I have no idea what their problem is here, though the "Undertow" appears to brig em back to their liquidly concept, is it to a woman? A fellow musician? And while the solo is magnificent, I am guessing the place of entrances elsewhere. If there is no emotional or musical hook, what are we at? Coheed And Cambria?
Perhaps the entry is purely musical? This is a singleminded trip down a rabbit hole where a broken romance becomes an apocalypse disaster movie. Everything drowns or everything floats. And Silver Snakes proves its point in a thundering guitar sound that like the emotional flood waters carries everything in its wake.
Grade: B+