Who’s in the band and what are your roles?

Me (Dan Oliver Gott) and Naomi Gott. We are a married couple. I hit a guitar and hope that good sounds come out. I also howl like a hungry wolf. Naomi does the drums and sings for real. She’s a much better singer than me.

What’s your ‘origin story’?

We were in a gunkpunk trio called The Franceens. We had an unreliable drummer, and as we’d systematically alienated all drummers in York, we had none left to offer the role to. We decided to try being a two-piece. We figured out a way we could do it that made sense to us, and that was that.

Which bands / artists are your biggest influences?

X Ray Cat Trio. In particular, their album ‘Bloody Deeds’. That album created Snakerattlers. Anna Calvi. She is a force of nature. Black Metal. Especially atmospheric black metal. Dark country music. The sort that is about burning barns and killing your spouse. People say we sound like The Cramps, but I don’t see it. We don’t bother with all that sleazy raunchy shit. We basically take bits of stuff we like, and do what feels natural to us with the limited skills we have.

Do you adapt your sound between shows and recordings?

What you hear is what you get with us. We don’t cheat by adding extra instruments in the studio. We record everything live, in exactly the same way we do when we play a show. It is the only way to capture our particular type of energy.

How would you describe your sound?

White-knuckle, needle-in-the-red rockabilly, with black metal moments spliced into it.

What’s your favourite song to play live and why? 

Our set opener – ‘Left Hand Path’. It sets the tone for our set and quickly lets people know that we’re not a straight-up rockabilly band. Anyone who survives our first song is the audience we do gigs to. Left Hand Path sets us apart as a rockabilly band that isn’t traditional. We fuck up the genre and kick it about a bit, until we get it to our mangled, splattered place.

What’s been the highlight of your music career so far?

Hearing one of our songs on a Netflix show.

Have you faced any difficulties or setbacks in your music career so far?

We are currently in the middle of something like this – my wrist is getting too damaged to play guitar without some sort of strap or painkillers. I’ve done too many gigs over the years, and the pain I get in my wrist is unfortunately a direct result of that. We are currently building a rehearsal room in our house, so we can try to find a way to play live again. I think I did the worst damage to it in 2019, where we accidentally spent a year on tour. We did 109 shows in 2019. Sometimes 3 a week. That seems like a lifetime ago now.

What’s coming up in the future for you?

Lots of rehearsals in our new rehearsal space! Probably lots of pain too, until we find a solution that doesn’t cause me any.

We’ve got an upcoming new album: ‘Queen of Peace’. We’ve heard the test pressings and we’re going to release it as soon as the units arrive from the pressing plant. Digital download too, probably from Bandcamp or something like that. We’re not setting a ‘release date’ because we’re not famous enough. If people buy it when it comes out, we are grateful, but it doesn’t matter to us. We just want it to exist. Rotosound make the best guitar strings and Sharkfin make the best plectrums. Wipeout Music Publishing has all of the best bands on it. RIP JOHN ESPLEN.

TELL ME ABOUT:

Your last album…what was the process there?

Snakerattlers is like a shark. If we don’t keep feeding, we die. So we go at everything from an instinctual place, and always give 100%. Turn up, plug in, whack the volume up, rock out. As for the writing process, I have a band that lives in my head. Occasionally, they spit out a song, and they don’t stop playing it until I’ve figured out how to play it on guitar. We then rehearse the song to add drums and vocals, if it passes our very strict shit-filter. If it isn’t a stone cold banger, it is discarded. Once we’re happy with it, we demo it and then send the demo to Nelly (our merch man and secret 3rd member of the band) to make sure we’ve not accidentally copied someone else’s song (he’s got an incredible brain that is basically a punk rock encyclopedia). If Nelly says yes, we record it for real.

Favourite song of yours!

‘Reptile’ by Dimmu Borgir. Or ‘Executioner’ by X Ray Cat Trio.

Your craziest tour experience

Doing a gig in our van, on the side of a road in a small village, to a couple of dog walkers, after a show in Lancaster got cancelled at the last minute.

Your dreams for the future! How would you describe them?

Dark. Very, very dark.

Is there anyone you’d love to share a stage with, living or dead? Why?

GG Allin. Because GG Allin.

Did you always know what kind of music you wanted to make, or did it come to you gradually?

I don’t really make music – I make bursts of noisy energetic chaos. ‘Music’ is the term humans give it. My “music” comes in many forms. I’ve made music for most genre types over the years, and I’ve been in countless bands to play them. I also write music for other bands occasionally. We made Snakerattlers as a way to carry on doing stuff, when we binned off our last drummer in The Franceens. I’ve been in 6 other bands since Snakerattlers was born.

Are your lyrics in character or based on your life?

I see lyrics as irrelevant. Most of the time I make them up on the spot. I don’t really have anything to say. I just like to make noise.

Was there a song or moment that made you fall in love with Rock n Roll?

For Snakerattlers, it would be hearing ‘Bloody Deeds’ by X Ray Cat Trio. That album showed me that rockabilly can be dark as fuck if you want it to be. Before that, I only ever knew it as big quiffs and Brian Stetzer type fiddly-diddly shit. But for me personally, I started down the path of live music after discovering a band called Nirvana when I was 13. I did acting until then, but my preference quickly shifted when I figured out what noise a guitar can make.

Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?

Kings of Hong Kong are the best band in Birmingham. Also, I make weird as fuck perfumes; www.skinspellparfumerie.com

Nick Constantine

Get your copy of ‘Heads Will Roll’ and all your Snakerattlers merch here