These Arms Are Snakes Get Punk Rock on Vinyl Splits and Cover Nirvana

Since the release of last year's 'Tail Swallower & Dove' These Arms Are Snakes have been jumping into the studio at every chance thrown their way. The results of these studio jaunts have been handfuls of split vinyl releases, which have included partnering with such acts like Russian Circles, Pelican, All The Saints, and Tropics; and there are some more recordings still waiting to be released.

"It's exciting," guitarist Ryan Frederiksen exclaimed to Noisecreep. This excitement is beyond just having a bunch of small vinyl pressed, which for Ryan is fun as he is a vinyl collector, but on these splits These Arms Are Snakes go into the studio with no full song written before hand. They let the recoding and the song happen in a fiery spirit of punk rock-this is how Ryan's other band Narrows approaches all their recordings.

Ryan explains, "We had no idea what the hell we were gonna do when we booked the studio time." Thankfully drummer Chris Common is the man behind the board, "so we had a little leeway to just spend the next couple of hours writing a song, and either Brian or I would have the seed idea, but more often than not it's Brian who has the skeleton and we just fill it out from there."

Two songs are still yet to be released, one for a compilation and the other for split 7" with fellow hometown friends Minus The Bear. The band are waiting on Minus The Bear at this point for that release to see the light of distros, "I don't think they have recorded their song yet and I don't even think they have decided on it. It was an idea we had a long time ago and we had the studio time booked so we knocked out a song that we really enjoy doing. Ours is done, we are just waiting on those lazy bastards," Ryan laughs.

The song recorded for that was a cover of a song by the goth-garage-rock band Lost Sounds, "It's f---ing awesome," Ryan says," Were really big fans of Lost Sounds, even before we knew that each other liked the band." On a tour each member discovered the rest of the band loved the Lost Sounds when they would play them in the van when it was their turn to drive, so the idea to cover one of their songs was a no brainer.

Surprisingly the band didn't change any covers to fit their style, "We just belted it out," Ryan says. That's how the band covered Nirvana's 'Heart Shaped Box' for a Nirvana tribute album coming out on Robotic Empire. Originally they tried to reinterpret the classic grunge song. "We slowed it down," said Ryan. "We changed keys. We tried to re-write the song but everything we ended up doing sounded like shit." This left the song, Ryan says, "pretty close to the original; Steve's vocals are definitely different and that kind of sets it apart."