Hot Snakes.

"WHEN WE PLAY A SHOW," SAYS HOT SNAKES GUITARIST Rick Froberg, "we're the oldest fucking people in the room."

But with age comes wisdom, and an innate ability to sniff out bullshit. With rock music in its current state, Froberg's nose must be clogged frill of the stuff.

Luckily, he and his band have a simple formula for success, and for quelling the woes of rock 'n' roll, which has for so many years floundered in a hurricane of bad musical trends. Froberg and his partner in crime John Reis just get up on stage, plug in their guitars and play them hard. No bullshit.

Froberg and Reis have been doing things simply and creatively for a long time. The pair used to peddle their twin-guitar onslaught in Drive Like Jehu, a band with a similar sound to Hot Snakes--one with lots of guitar.

"These songs are guitar-driven," says Froberg. "That's pretty much what it's all about."

He means it. The band recorded its latest album Suicide Invoice (Swami Records) with two guitar players and no bass.

"You don't need it," says Froberg bluntly There's not a lot of fancy stuff going on with the guitars either, unless playing chords is considered fancy Froberg and Reis don't use effects or pedals, just their fingers and their brains, which comes across sounding a lot more interesting in the end.

"It just gets in the way" says Froberg. "We just plug straight in. It cuts down on setup time and all that stuff. Guitars pretty much all sound the same. They're all made with bandsaws and have strings."

Of course Froberg is oversimplifying, probably for modesty's sake. And he's also not addressing the obvious question that his statement begs: If all guitars sound the same and he's just plugging in and playing, then what makes Hot Snakes sound so good?

The answer is ingenuity. However stripped-down Hot Snakes' music is, it doesn't come off that way. There's a lot going on in every song. There's a little bit of keyboard in there, but it's hard to find, and even melodica on one song. Other than that, it's mostly just Reis laying down the basic guitar, track and Froberg painting over the top.

"I do extra stuff," says Froberg, keeping up the humble second guitarist bit. "John is the rhythm guitarist... He's the good guitarist, I'm the lousy guitarist. If he wasn't in the band, it would just sound like a bunch of noise."

Froberg's role in the band goes a little deeper than just making noise. He also writes the lyrics, which on Suicide Invoice tend towards the sarcastic, pessimistic and even macabre.

"We're working that whole 'dark' thing," says Froberg. "But I thought the other record was dark. I guess it's just the bank."