Norwich, UK post-hardcore band Other Half take inspiration from a specific range of mostly American bands from the '90s and 2000s, groups that played sharp-edged, visceral, explosively angry music for dive bars and basement shows. One of those bands is Hot Snakes, no longer a going concern due to the 2023 death of frontman Rick Froberg, also of Drive Like Jehu and Obits. On their new single "Give Them The Girl," Other Half pay tribute. Allow the band's Cal Hudson to explain:
I remember the first time I heard Hot Snakes, it wasn’t really them, but instead a cover of If Credit’s What Matters by our later-to-be first label owner Gallows. I’m sure Lags won’t mind, but it was the best Gallows song I’d ever heard and I couldn’t believe it had been consigned to a B-side. A year or two later I realised my mistake and fell madly, truly, deeply in love with Hot Snakes. Taught, sinewy and slithery, yet also the hardest fucking thing I’d ever heard.
The death of frontman Rick Froberg in 2023 was the impetus for writing Give Them The Girl. We've always stolen wholesale from Hot Snakes in Other Half, but this time we wanted the full bank heist. It’s got the two-kit assault of Salton City, it’s got the effing melodica of I Hate The Kids, I have no idea what the actual guitar terminology is, but it’s also got the nasty-to-nice chord progressions that make them the world’s best band. Does this now make us the world’s best band? No, I can’t play 3 downstrokes without having a sit down, but I hope Give Them The Girl is a fitting tribute to the last true agents of misrule that were left on this sad little planet.
Talking of sad little things, lyrically GTTG concerns the saddest of all little things, a man writing rock songs. Chiefly, this man, and my quasi-serious insecurities that everyone has had enough of my druggy bloke-core schtick and Other Half would be a much better band if Soapy sang the songs. The catch? The sad little man’s ego simply won’t allow for that, so it’s druggy bloke-core on infinity, baby. This is all fairly tongue-in-cheek stuff, but the irony wasn’t lost on me when I told Soapy what I wanted her to sing on a song about men telling women what to sing. I am but a pig.
"Give Them The Girl" certainly exists in the Hot Snakes zone. Hear it below.
