These Arms Are Snakes

Have you seen that commercial for the Scentstories Fragrance Player? Instead of a music disc, you stick some CD-shaped odor puck into it, and a burst of perfume comes floating out. They have actual titles, too, like Relaxing in a Hammock and Strolling in the Garden. Well, when they turn These Arms Are Snakes’ new album, Oxeneers or the Lion Sleeps When Its Antelope Go Home, into a Scentstories disc, it’ll be called Sucking a Quart of Snot Out of Your Infected Sinuses. The group’s debut EP last year was amazing — a slash of tough, sharp post-hardcore that lived up to all its ex-Botch hype. Oxeneers, on the other hand, is clogged with wads of tedious prog, squashed flat production and utterly pointless synths. Worse are the lyrics, a messy scramble of sass and faux intellectualism typified by lines like, “New rural ruins or street fed for postmodern pigeons” and “I was born too deep.” If you see someone sticking this disc into a player, don’t just cover your ears: Hold your nose.