The Awesome Snakes

Lore & Background

The Awesome Snakes grew out of Danny Henry's time in the Soviettes in 2004, when Holoien and Henry renamed themselves Annie Awesome and Danny Snakes. They started the duo to ease 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. The instrumentation was deliberately simple, just bass and drums, with the bass played through a Fender Blues Deville amplifier on high distortion. A.V. Club writer Christopher Bahn noted that the song topics revolve around 'two subjects: snakes and/or things that are awesome.'

In 2005, the cassette-only indie label Home Taping Is Killing the Record Industry released the band's self-titled debut. Their second album, Venom, was released July 18, 2006, on Wisconsin record label Crustacean Records, featuring fifteen tracks recorded in much higher fidelity than the debut cassette. The album included a guest appearance by Twin Cities MC P.O.S. In 2009, the band released a four-song digital EP, Snake Cake, on Minneapolis' Ass Records. The duo's last show as Awesome Snakes was on March 19, 2010, at the Turf Club in St. Paul, Minnesota.

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. Holoien's post-Snakes groups include The Horrible and the Miserable. 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.

Reader's Guide

The Awesome Snakes are significant as a minimalist punk duo that embraced absurdity and humor within the often serious punk scene. Their music, characterized by simple bass-and-drums instrumentation and lyrics limited to snakes and awesome things, was a deliberate departure from the pressure of their main band, the Soviettes. The band's second album, Venom, received notable critical success in Minnesota, being named one of the best albums of 2006 in the Star Tribune's annual Twin Cities Critics Tally and making best-of lists for The A.V. Club's Twin Cities edition and Pulse. The band's deliberately silly moniker earned it a spot in the 2006 edition of The A.V. Club's tongue-in-cheek feature The Year in Band Names. Critical reception was mixed: some praised the album's 'huge, manic, underground sound' and 'lo-fi, furious, primal garage-rock voodoo,' while others, like Razorcake, felt the band was a joke that might only be funny to its creators. The band's legacy includes the song 'I Want a Snake' being featured in two installments of Electronic Arts' skateboarding video game series Skate: Skate 2 and the Wii version of Skate It. The 2021 vinyl re-release of Venom, with bonus tracks, introduced the band to a new audience, with Roctober Magazine noting that 'nothing is as timeless as lo fi, stripped down, absurdist snake songs.'

Did You Know?

• The band's lyrics focus on only two subjects: snakes and/or things that are awesome.
• Their song 'I Want a Snake' appears in the video games Skate 2 and the Wii version of Skate It.
• The duo's last show was on March 19, 2010, at the Turf Club in St. Paul, Minnesota.
• Venom was re-released on vinyl in 2021 by Stand Up! Records with the Snake Cake EP as bonus tracks.

Origins & the Pressure-Valve Philosophy

The Awesome Snakes were never meant to be a serious second act. In 2004, while The Soviettes were on the road nationally and collecting growing critical attention, bassist Annie Holoien and drummer Danny Henry decided they needed an outlet that carried zero expectations. They rebranded themselves as "Annie Awesome" and "Danny Snakes" and set out to write what Henry later called a "jokey" collection of punk songs, deliberately keeping things "free and loose." The setup was stripped to the bare minimum: Holoien on bass cranked through a Fender Blues Deville at maximum distortion, and Henry behind the kit. No guitar, no third voice—just two people and a rhythm section. Henry also threaded in audio snippets pulled from his personal stash of eccentric self-help and how-to tapes, adding an extra layer of absurdity. Lyrically, the scope was intentionally narrow; as A.V. Club writer Christopher Bahn observed, the songs circled around essentially two topics: snakes, or things that are awesome. Both musicians maintained parallel projects—Holoien with The God Damn Doo Wop Band, Henry with France Has The Bomb and International Robot—so the Snakes existed as a pressure-release valve inside a dense Minneapolis punk ecosystem.

Discography & Career Arc

The band's recorded output spanned roughly six years and four distinct releases. Their self-titled debut arrived in 2004 on a cassette-only imprint called Home Taping Is Killing the Record Industry, a label whose very name matched the duo's irreverent spirit. Three years later, on July 17, 2006, Wisconsin-based Crustacean Records issued Venom, a fifteen-track record captured at noticeably higher fidelity by a mutual friend named Ross and mastered by Dave Gardener. The album also included a guest verse from Twin Cities rapper P.O.S. In 2008, the Snakes were featured on Crustacean's double-disc DVD retrospective, Drown Out the Daylights. Their final new material came in October 2009 with Snake Cake, a four-song digital EP pressed out by Minneapolis' Ass Records. The duo called it quits on March 19, 2010, playing their last show at the Turf Club in St. Paul on the same evening as The Soviettes' Rarities release party. More than a decade later, on October 15, 2021, Stand Up! Records reissued Venom on vinyl, folding the four Snake Cake tracks in as bonus material and giving the catalog a tangible, physical home.

Critical Reception & the Art of the Absurd

Venom became something of a local landmark in Minnesota's music press. It landed on the Star Tribune's Twin Cities Critics Tally as one of the year's best albums in 2006, and it also appeared on best-of lists from The A.V. Club's Twin Cities edition and Pulse. The band's deliberately ridiculous name even earned a mention in The A.V. Club's tongue-in-cheek "Year in Band Names" feature that same year. Critics consistently noted the tension between the music's goofiness and the musicians' commitment. City Pages' Andrea Swensson highlighted how the duo played with a seriousness that sharply contrasted the silliness of the material. Sliver Magazine's Stephanie Soucheray called the record self-referential, vulgar, and weird, but stressed it was never pretentious—just people having fun and being honest about their intentions. National outlets chimed in too: Alternative Press described it as "lo-fi, furious, primal garage-rock voodoo," while Punk Planet called it a "confrontationally comedic dose of garage bangers and pogo punk punishers." Not every reviewer was a convert; punk zine Razorcake found Venom worth listening to "maybe once at the most." When Stand Up! Records reissued the album in 2021, Roctober Magazine's Jake Austen declared that nothing is as timeless as lo-fi, stripped-down, absurdist snake songs.

Life Beyond the Snakes & Cultural Footprint

The Awesome Snakes were never a one-trick pony for either musician. Holoien went on to front The Horrible and the Miserable, while Henry continued his work with France Has The Bomb and International Robot. In 2019, the two reconnected to form Green/Blue, a rock quartet that also pulled in former members of two other Minneapolis punk acts, The Blind Shake and Birthday Suits. The group released a self-titled debut record in 2020, signaling that the creative chemistry which powered the Snakes still had life in it. Beyond the music scene proper, the duo left a small but memorable mark in pop culture: their track "I Want a Snake" was licensed for two installments of Electronic Arts' Skate video game series—Skate 2 and the Wii version of Skate It—exposing the band's fuzzed-out, bass-and-drums energy to a generation of gamers who may never have set foot in a Minneapolis punk show. The 2021 vinyl reissue of Venom, which bundled the Snake Cake EP as bonus tracks, further cemented the Snakes' place in the broader Midwestern garage-punk lineage, proving that a two-person band with a silly name and a Fender Blues Deville could leave a lasting imprint on the scene.