Complete Snake — Red Hog (2023)
What’s In There
Classifiable as “modern metal” by any standard, Complete Snake presents interesting sequences of musical ideas that could have originated in hardcore punk, squeezed through jazz metal, and organized in the progressive spirit of underground metal. The fact that one can still tell them apart from the music indicates some manner of integration is in order, even though what results remains enjoyable.
Avoiding the traps of any genre, the only outright accusation the band could suffer with any degree of pause would be that of not yet committing to a clear and firm aesthetic choice. That is, outward trappings of the music seem to dominate all. Sure, you have currents of artistic thought that collapse all possible meaning to form, but the only way to test ideas is to observe what results they produce in the real world. In the case of any human endeavor, but especially in the arts, the effects we most want to pay attention to are those effected on the human soul, on the emotions, that is, on the body proper, the nervous system.
We must become aware of the astral, if you will.
“A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what’s going on. A psychotic is a guy who’s just found out what’s going on.”
― William S. Burroughs
Time after time, we hear a band reluctant to depend on any one technique, any one approach, that would allow one to predict their next move, or become complacent in the course of our listening to them.
We commend, on the other hand, the fact that despite the effort to express a variety of patterns, Complete Snake remains true to their hardcore punk jazz metal affinities. The music, thus, sustains itself by adhering to a constant center, embedding well-understood signals amidst the dense punishment Complete Snake visits upon the listener.
The denizens and their instruments
As any proper metal band should do, Complete Snake places the guitars not just front and center, but BEFORE EVERYTHING ELSE. Aesthically, mix-wise, sound-art-wise, I’ve no idea how wise this is. Nevertheless, metal music is a music that rides on the riffs of the guitar, as the patriarch of all true underground metal theory and philosophy has pointed out in his seminal writings.
The further into the album we listen, the more death metal voicings come at us from the guitars, more strictly underground metal drum patterns as well. These come at us always in a revolving door of moods, never staying long enough to bore us, a source of relief, but neither long enough to tell us why they are here, a mild source of annoyance. We are served a teaser of what Complete Snake could do, given enough room to operate, giving itself the leeway to explore further aloft.
Percussion aesthetic follows function through and through, yet it manages to add a variety of fills, arresting the pace here, accelerating it elsewhere. Most appreciated are the black metal blast beats that sometimes surprise us and match the guitar patterns that also cross over into the metal camp more often as we progress down the song list.
Yet another highlight of the EP is the use of dual vocals throughout, adding a layer of depth and sonority. These appear to be meant to mix the origin punk screamo with the death metal kind of growl, giving an otherworldly edge to mental degeneration.
No Pictures (沒有清晰的印象)
Any form of art cannot hope to be anything else except a form of communication. It is not just about what the artist has to say, tries to say, or how it comes out for them, but how the work is perceived by others. All these vectors give shape to the multi-dimensional thing that is the work of art. As part of the audience, moreover, we can most of all hope to be sincere about how and what it represents for us.
如果我不明白或誤會你的意思，意思就是我們應該換溝通的方式.
Anything that humans perceive and communicate boils down to representations of visuals, sounds, and sensations. There is nothing else for the human being. Abstract patterns have no independent existence from our phenomenological existence that we can know of, that we can verify as flesh-and-blood men. A work of art cannot simply be about “rebellion” as an abstract concept. It must communicate a specific instance of rebellion, whether real or fictitious, or neither.
In Complete Snake, the urban, the pavement itself, the brick walls, find their way in glimpses, in rhythms and attitudes of aggression, of visceral oppression. The sensation is always rushed, it never settles on anything for long, nor on any one atmosphere. It is a city, and a series of scenes in it, passing by, none of which are of much consequence. They are vague postcards, loud as they may be, gone even as one wishes to feel their texture.
To be fair, a lot of the music in punk-related genres carries the implication of futility, of the inescapable irrelevancy of modern life.
“That which cannot be reached by wisdom should not be talked about. If one speaks of it, horns will grow on one’s head.”
All the energy and aggression, the twists and turns of the music, hint at a kind of compulsion and juvenile escape. The escape route, though, happens not outwards or backwards towards an idyllic dream but rather allowing the demon of modernity to take possession of the band members. Like modernist writers, we see a battle of dynamic forms against modernity itself without the slightest intention of avoiding being modern.
What We Have Here
I perceive little else from the aesthetic onslaught. Engaging the imagination, I see puffs of smoke, rushing movements, ghosts coming in and out, and then a clear day.
Let’s be very careful with our words. “No images” here simply means that the Jungian dimension projected out of Complete Snake’s music is chaotic, visceral and most true. As such, it is not to be pinned down as a symbol or a representative structure as one would see in the classical symphony or novel.
The narrative arcs are there, and someone might say what I see is more of what is in me than what is in the music. While there is truth to that, that what happens in me when contemplating a work of art is a function of both the material as seed and my body and mind as earth, I believe it is important to note there is not enough genetic differentiation in that seed yet to fully materialize, to embody, a new organism.
“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”
— Carl Gustav Jung
The Will to Recklessness
Red Hog is a taste of what the Complete Snake can do. Each song is self-contained to the point of giving us the sense of centeredness we have yet to find in the music of Complete Snake. Judging by their past evolution, and, as a young band in quick transformation, obviously high IQ capabilities, an impulse for sincere expression, and an enviable attention to detail, we know these are hurdles they will overcome.
Contrary to the aforementioned intuitions and personal musings, Complete Snake have most in their favor to make a great future album from the groundwork covered in this EP. First of all, the music here ticks most of the requirements of great metal music: an organic sense of flow, variety within stylistic consistency, adventurousness boiling up from creative ideas, and the will to recklessness.
What may be missing is what has been referred to as the impressionistic quality that the greatest underground metal displays. The Wagnerian quality allows us to, through the power of synesthesia, attach colors and images and fire off electrical impulses across greater and greater neural networks, piling up sensations and even memories on the music, lived by us or by others.
The Way Forward
Rather than have the band ask the question with their front brain, which would probably lead to an excessively calculated output not necessarily matching the actual music produced, they will probably discover the “true calling” of the band, of their individual wills entangled in the project, through more experimentation, until clearer and clearer expressions come out by their own accord.
Essentially, we can see this as a work of progressive summoning, and materialization, brought about by assuming its existence, awaiting it, expecting it, and feeding it without second thoughts, until it satisfies the senses and the intuition of the musician.
How much it satisfies us, the public oddly tends to match how much it satisfies the artist. Not in every aspect, but as a total appreciation for its sense of completion. And so often we can grasp this to be the truth behind the art, that beyond a certain technical proficiency, what really counts is the genuine satisfaction of the artist as a result of the pace, coloring, and development of the work. When it happens, we cannot help but share in it in our own way.
