Awesome Snakes | |
|---|---|
 Awesome Snakes | |
| Background information | |
| Origin | Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States |
| Genres | |
| Years active | 2004–2010 |
| Labels | Crustacean Records, Ass Records, Stand Up! Records |
| Past members | Annie Holoien Danny Henry |
The Awesome Snakes were a two-person punk rock band from Minneapolis, Minnesota, featuring Annie "Sparrows" Holoien (The Soviettes, The God Damn Doo Wop Band) on bass and Danny Henry (The Soviettes, France Has The Bomb, International Robot) on drums. [1]
The Awesome Snakes grew out of the Soviettes as a side project in 2004, when the Soviettes were touring nationally and earning increasing critical buzz. Holoien and Henry, renaming themselves "Annie Awesome" and "Danny Snakes", started the duo as a way to ease the pressure by making what Henry described as a "jokey" and "free and loose" set of punk songs, spiced with audio samples from Henry's collection of odd self-help and how-to tapes. [2]
The instrumentation is deliberately simple, just Holoien on bass and Henry on drums, with the bass played through a Fender Blues Deville amplifier on high distortion. [3] [4] The lyrics are also highly focused; [5] [6] A.V. Club writer Christopher Bahn noted that the song topics revolve around "two subjects: snakes and/or things that are awesome." [7]
In 2004, the cassette-only indie label Home Taping Is Killing the Record Industry released the band's self-titled debut. [2] [8]
Their second album, Venom , was released July 17, 2006, on Wisconsin record label Crustacean Records. [9] [10] It featured fifteen tracks recorded in much higher fidelity than the debut cassette by their friend Ross and mastered by Dave Gardener, and features a guest appearance by Twin Cities MC P.O.S. [2] [8]
The band appears on the 2008 Crustacean Records double-disc DVD retrospective Drown Out the Daylights. [11]
In 2009, the band released a four-song digital EP, Snake Cake, on Minneapolis' Ass Records. [12]
The duo's last show as Awesome Snakes was on March 19, 2010, at the Turf Club in St. Paul, Minnesota; the same night as the release show for The Soviettes' retrospective Rarities album. [13] [14] [15] [16]
On October 15, 2021, Venom was re-released on vinyl by Stand Up! Records, with the four songs from Snake Cake included as bonus tracks. [6] [17]
Holoien's post-Snakes groups include The Horrible and the Miserable. [18] In 2019, Holoien and Henry formed a new rock quartet, Green/Blue, with former members of two other Minneapolis punk bands, The Blind Shake and Birthday Suits. The band released a self-titled debut record in 2020. [19] [20] [21]
Venom enjoyed great critical success in the band's home state of Minnesota, being named one of the best albums of 2006 in the Star Tribune's annual Twin Cities Critics Tally [22] and also making the best-of lists for The A.V. Club's Twin Cities edition [23] and Pulse. [24] The band's deliberately silly moniker also earned it a spot in the 2006 edition of The A.V. Club's tongue-in-cheek feature The Year in Band Names. [25]
Andrea Swensson of City Pages said "they play with a seriousness that sharply contrasts the silly nature of their music." [26] Stephanie Soucheray, writing for Sliver Magazine, said "Venom may be self-referential, vulgar, goofy and weird. But it is never pretentious. The album is the sound of people having fun, and people being honest about their musical intentions." [2] Tim Thompson of Wisconsin's "Local Sounds Magazine" praised Venom's "huge, manic, underground sound ... delivering an almost disembodied psychedelic freak-out in the middle of a garage-punk record." [1]
The album also received critical praise from several national publications, including Alternative Press , which called it "lo-fi, furious, primal garage-rock voodoo"; [27] Maximumrocknroll , which called it "smart-arsed, snotty, arty and funny;" [28] and Punk Planet , which called it "a fuzzed up and confrontationally comedic dose of garage bangers and pogo punk punishers." [29] Punk zine Razorcake praised two early demos, 2006's The Stupid Demo and The Cheap-Ass Cassette Demo, calling them "low-fi garage punk that is poppy yet very psychedelic in a go-go kid way." [30] [5] The publication was less impressed with Venom itself, saying: "Overall, this seems like a joke band that must be really funny for the people who made it, but for the rest of us it's worth listening to maybe once at the most." [31]
Reviewing the 2021 re-release, Jake Austen of Roctober Magazine said "This reissue of an early 2000s Midwestern ridiculous riff rock relic proves that nothing is as timeless as lo fi, stripped down, absurdist snake songs." [6]
| Review scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| Punk News |    [10] |
| Ultimate Guitar |    [32] |
| Sliver Magazine | B+ [2] |
The song "I Want a Snake" is featured in two installments of Electronic Arts' skateboarding video game series Skate : Skate 2 and the Wii version of Skate It . [36]
Buddha is a demo album by the American rock band Blink-182. Recorded and released in January 1994 under the name Blink, it was the band's first recording to be sold and distributed. The band had recorded two previous demos in drummer Scott Raynor's bedroom—Flyswatter and Demo No.2—using a four track recorder. Most of the tracks from Buddha were re-recorded for the band's subsequent releases; seven were re-recorded for their debut album Cheshire Cat and one was re-recorded for their second album Dude Ranch.
The $5.98 E.P. – Garage Days Re-Revisited is the first extended play by American heavy metal band Metallica, released on August 21, 1987, by Elektra Records. It consists of covers of late-'70s and early-'80s new wave of British heavy metal bands and punk rock music rehearsed in Lars Ulrich's soundproofed garage and then recorded in Los Angeles over the course of six days. It is the group's first release following the death of bassist Cliff Burton and the first to feature his successor, Jason Newsted.
Anthrax are an English anarcho-punk band formed in Gravesend, Kent, England, in 1980. They recorded their first demo in 1981 and went on to release two 7" EPs on Crass Records and Small Wonder Records. They appeared on compilations released by Crass Records, Mortarhate Records and Fightback Records. They toured outside the UK twice in the Netherlands with Dutch band The Ex.
The Spits are an American punk rock band formed in Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1993. They later moved to Seattle. Currently, the band has released six albums. All are officially self-titled, unofficially titled 1, 2, 3, 4, V, and VI respectively. The albums were released by Nickel and Dime Records, Slovenly Recordings, Dirtnap Records, Thriftstore Records and In the Red Records respectively for the first five. In October 2020, they released their latest album, VI, independently.
The Soviettes were a punk rock band from Minneapolis, Minnesota, founded in 2001. The group is composed of Annie "Sparrows" Holoien (guitar), Maren "Sturgeon" Macosko (guitar), Susy Sharp, and Danny Henry (drums), all of whom share singing and songwriting duties.
LP III is the third album by the Minneapolis punk rock band The Soviettes. It was released on CD and LP on June 25, 2005, to mixed critical reviews.
M.O.T.O. is an American garage punk band currently based in New Hampshire. Formed in New Orleans in 1981 by Paul Caporino, the lineup of the band has seen many changes over the years, with Caporino being the only consistent member. The band has recorded many albums, singles and CDs, including several albums for the Chicago-based record label Criminal IQ Records.
Parasites are an American pop-punk band. They were formed in the late 1980s by guitarist / singer Dave Parasite and bassist Ron Nole in New Jersey. Dave later relocated to Berkeley, California, and continued with a new lineup during the heyday of Lookout! Records and the Bay Area pop-punk revival.
Uranium Club is an American punk rock band based in Minneapolis. The band consists of members Brendan Wells, Harry Wohl, Ian Stemper and Matt Stagner, several being former members of Iowa City bands Solid Attitude and NERV. The band has released four albums on Static Shock Records and other independent labels, and been associated with the egg punk subgenre.
Crustacean Records is an independent record label in Wisconsin, United States, that was founded in 1994.
Razorcake is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that publishes the Razorcake fanzine, a DIY punk rock fanzine published bi-monthly out of Los Angeles, California. It was co-founded by Todd Taylor and Sean Carswell in 2001.
Banner Pilot is a punk band from Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Their music is influenced by acts such as Jawbreaker, The Lawrence Arms, Screeching Weasel, and Hot Water Music.
Venom is a 2006 album by Minneapolis punk rock band Awesome Snakes, a side project of then-Soviettes members Annie "Sparrows" Holoien and Danny Henry.
T.C.C.P is the debut release by the Minneapolis punk band The Soviettes. It was released on Pop Riot Records, a Minneapolis label run by Max Peters.
Zonic Shockum is an American alternative rock band formed in 1988 in Philadelphia.
Rarities is the fourth album, and first compilation, by the Minneapolis punk rock band The Soviettes. It is a selection of the group's lesser-known material, including their early EPs. It was released free on the internet and also in vinyl LP format.
International Robot were a punk rock band from Minneapolis, Minnesota, founded in 2000. All of the group's members went on to form other notable bands on the Minneapolis punk scene, including the Soviettes, The Awesome Snakes, France Has The Bomb, the Dummies, the Prostitutes, the Voltz, the Dynamiters, Die Electric! and Dirty Robbers. All of these bands, including International Robot, have been covered by City Pages, the local music weekly newspaper.
France Has The Bomb is an alternative rock band from Minneapolis, Minnesota, described as "the new sound of Minneapolis!" in 2009 by Rolling Stone magazine. The group consists of Srini Radhakrishna, Hideo Takahashi (guitar), David Storberg (bass) and Alex Rose (drums). The group has received considerable airplay on Minneapolis' Radio K.
Hogan's Heroes was an American hardcore punk band formed in New Jersey in 1984. During their time they recorded three full lengths for California label New Red Archives. The band broke up in 1993.
Terry James Katzman was a producer, sound engineer, archivist, and record-store owner in Minneapolis, Minnesota, known for his work with the Twin Cities music scene, particularly during the formative early years of Hüsker Dü, The Replacements, and The Suburbs.
| Authority control databases: Artists |
|---|
