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AUDIT IN PROGRESS
(Swami)
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The third album from San Diego’s Hot Snakes is also their best, though the band’s plan of attack hasn’t much changed since their 2000 debut, Automatic Midnight: the airtight rhythm section still propels the minor-key rhythmic riffing of the half-distorted guitars like a freight liner, and Rick Froberg still can’t (or just won’t) write a vocal melody. But Audit in Progress finds Froberg and Hot Snakes’ other principal songwriter and guitarist, John Reis (of Rocket from the Crypt), further honing a craft that they’ve been working on together since their first collaboration, Pitchfork, in the mid ’80s, and later in the seminal post-hardcore band Drive like Jehu. They distill the rhythmically and structurally complex songs of Jehu, complete with mindfuck meter changes and noisy guitar experimentation, into two- and three-minute blasts infused with a hint of the cocksure psychobilly punk attitude of Rocket from the Crypt. It’s not revelatory, since the songs on the band’s first two albums are in a similar mode. But there are numerous moments — the addictive guitar melody in "Plenty for All" and the pulse-accelerating ending of "Reflex," for instance — that grab you and shake you in a way that Hot Snakes’ previous efforts didn’t.
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