Complete Snake — Top Boy (2019)

Approaching a band like Complete Snake as a newcomer, you learn to expect anything and everything. Well, not quite. You learn to expect fast pacing more often than not, big aggressive guitars, and all in all, some sort of weirdness. You learn to expect a foundation of hardcore punk, crazy vocalizations delivered in the “screamo” styling more often than not, and the rhythmic progression that gives songs their topography.

What you would not expect, if all you’ve heard are their last three releases, is the progressive inventiveness encircled by solid guitar riffs and changing yet coherent rhythms served to you in Top Boy. Some sections in this demo could have been engendered by late 1970s prog rock guitar players forced to write development section riffs for a punk band.

The willingness to switch from angry screaming vocals to gentle laments that never presume a learned or classical influence adds a delicate touch that along with the rest of the details makes for a rich listening experience.

“English punk was a revolution.”
— Rick Wakeman

What you will find most delightful about this release is how each song gives you something entirely new and unique — within the context of the demo, that is. We are also left with the impression that the core of these songs is a personality and that from this dynamic center are emitted the streaming moods that the guitars and drums later concretize.

The word here is organicity. Extreme organicity. The dream of any artist, I presume, would be to achieve the state of flow in which he connects his inner flow of impressions to finalized forms. While it is not necessary for us to assert that this is the case with Complete Snake, the point is that it feels that way. Section boundaries in songs are not immediately evident to the un-fastidious listener who closes their eyes and chooses to ride the wave. And this wave is imminently ridable by virtue of that natural settling in, that magnetic pull forward the ghost of perception and invention effects.

Anachronistic additions, such as when halfway through ‘Micky (Sad Clown 2)’ we hear a warped Tony Iommi make his way in, bring the straight-up evolutive hardcore barrage into relief.

Pain comes through in this first, as well as subsequent, Complete Snake releases. Bottled up, suppressed rage by sensitive souls thrown at too young an age into the jaws of urban adversity. The prognosis results from an examination of the music alone. And it may come as a result of the band creating sonic representations of the reality of such human beings, consciously or not.

It seems reasonable that a band of friends laden with multifarious ideas, youthful energy, and “anti-social” talent would throw together this great diversity of elements pulling at a wild core. What is surprising and deserves great praise is that Complete Snake was able to pull it off not just coherently but with such a sense of movement and direction as to constitute a kind of mini-opera.