HOT SNAKES /// AUDIT IN PROGRESS /// SWAMI RECORDS ///

Man, America is fucked right now. We've got the most embarrassing president ever, we've got obese parents breeding obese children, and now we've got this whole Atkins bullshit. What a scary, fucking cult following this nonsense has created. Have you ever seen anyone on this diet? They're miserable. Just check out the women at my work. They sit there at the lunchroom table with this dead look in their eyes as I eat a gazillion crackers with my tuna. They're so fucked up, they always have to make it a point to say for the millionth fucking time, "I can't eat crackers, you know, because of the diet." I'm like, "It's bad enough we have to work for a living, must you add this depressing layer of hopelessness on me while I eat lunch?"

Luckily for us, the Hot Snakes understand how awful everything's getting. On their brutal, magnificent third album, Audit In Progress, the boys bring the anger and knock the wind out of all the bullshit. Of course, by now everyone knows the band's back story. Rick Froberg and John Reis, former leaders of post-punk godheads Drive Like Jehu, also lead the Hot Snakes. At the center of both bands are Froberg's unmistakable angry, cigarette-scraped screams. Plus, the Hot Snakes, like Jehu, just brutalize the fuck out of their instruments. It's not punk, not angular (one of those favorite, senseless rock critic words), just full-on rock.

On Audit in Progress, the Hot Snakes don't disappoint in the pissed-off department, by dispensing plenty of poison-pen scrawls. In "Think About Carbs," Froberg sneers, "Making it worthwhile to watch you implode/It's all an exercise to self-cannibalize/Just to kill the static, the static in the room." On the title track, he defiantly sings, "Come on, audit me, audit me, I don't give a shit." The real gem on the album, though, is the last song. With a perfectly catchy guitar riff that sounds straight off a Cars album, "...Plenty for All" is either a Southern California anthem, or an anti-Southern California anthem. Since, at last report, Froberg lives in Brooklyn and Reis still remains in his hometown of San Diego, it's anyone's guess whether Froberg is being sarcastic when he sings, "Southern California, let's go!/There's room for us all." As someone who digs SoCal, it puts me in the mood to move west.

Shit man, Hot Snakes are back. America is saved.

Paul Menchaca