This is a soundtrack; close your eyes - you can see the film. While the camera strains, image wobbling, making the most of a lack of light, there are riots in the streets; armored vehicles blasting water cannons; a teenager in a bandana kicks a tear gas canister back toward the line of cops. Natural disasters; a wall of water washing cars from the street; half-finished skyscrapers collapse; cracks opening in the earth’s surface.

這像是電影配樂，在閉上雙眼之際便能清楚看見這部電影。鏡頭過濾、晃動，將所有的光去除。街上的抗爭、武裝載具發射加壓水砲、穿戴頭巾的少年將催淚瓦斯踢回警察防線之中。天災襲來：雨牆沖刷街上的汽車，未完成的摩天大樓接續倒塌，將地表鑿出了個大洞。

Like a soundtrack, you can feel the music abruptly shifting from one scene to another, unheralded, uncued, shifting direction like a school of fish or a mob of protestors. At first it’s just the drums spattering rapidly forward, traditional snares and kicks alongside muted dull cymbals and rattling pans and trash can lids. Then a raucous, enraged saxophone, maddened beyond belief and REFUSING to shut up, suddenly appears running alongside the drums. Rhythmically, the two are locked, though they still both feel like they’re being played while falling down a long flight of stairs.

你可以感受到聲音瞬間切換至另個場景，似電影配樂般 - 無預警、毫無保留的的轉換方向，如魚群或抗爭群眾。最初只是鼓聲快速的擊濺，傳統的小鼓、大鼓伴隨銅鈸、鏗鏘作響的鍋碗及垃圾桶的蓋子。然後，喧囂盛怒的薩克斯風捉了狂，和鼓聲一同奔馳 — 極力抗拒、無法停歇。 雖在節奏上彼此緊密同步，但感覺起來卻像是他們演奏於 — 蹣跚跌落的瞬間。

When it’s just the drums and the sax, angry beyond reason, there’s still a very tangible emptiness, a space within the sound. And when (Z)erpents want to fill that space, they do – with big fudgy slices of guitar. What the guitar has in common with the drums and the sax is an element of relentlessness, although this is expressed as long cloudy drones rather than furious action. It’s a threatening undertone like a dark cloud that refuses to break into unavoidable rain.

當只有鼓和憤怒的薩克斯風時，聲音中仍有些明顯的空間和留白，一層又一層、毛烈成片的吉他和弦便將整個空間填滿。吉他與鼓、薩克斯風一樣充滿混亂強烈的元素，但並不是憤怒的方式，而是以雷雲層般厚重的遠長延音，像是為即將襲來的暴雨所下的警示：你將無法避免。

But it gives the sax another outlet for its anger. There are so many voices speaking through that instrument, it suggests a bullhorn being handed from a street preacher to a demagogue. At the end of “Liminal Triad,” the drummer is hammering out something like a break-beat behind the distorted guitar drone, and in the last thirty seconds, the saxophone turns into a traditional Taiwanese funeral reed, a death horn, overblown with impossible syllables. In the next track, “Micro-incisions in the old push pull,” the drums are clattering through the kitchen at a breakneck pace, when the sax opens up with an undulating call, a primal howl like an alien animal. These musicians know how dangerous their instruments can be, which is why they only use them sparingly. The poisonous, murky guitar tones that appear in “Micro-incisions” must be driving the Geiger counter mad.

除此之外，薩克斯風還有其他宣洩出口。聽起來像是不同的人們透過它說話一般，從街上的傳教士手中轉交給了煽動的群眾。在’’ Liminal Triad’’的尾聲，鼓聲在破裂的吉他延音之中重擊有如breakbeat的節奏，最後三十秒，薩克斯風變成了臺灣傳統喪葬樂曲，一個滿載異界音節的死亡號角。次曲’’Micro-incisions in the old push pull’’，鼓聲以驚人的速度敲打整個廚房，薩克斯風以嘶啞的聲音拉開序幕，聽起來就像是外來動物的原始嚎叫。這幾位音樂家知道他們可以用樂器帶來多大的危險，他們得謹慎的使用。如劇毒迷霧般的吉他音色必定讓蓋革計數器（＊註）失控。

Speed. Violence. Unpredictability, even the second time you hear a piece. (Z)erpents’ music erases itself the moment it’s past, like a license plate avoiding capture by a surveillance camera. Like the work of John Zorn or Melt Banana, one gets the sense even from this most abstract composition that the world that the artists are seeing is bad and they don’t like it. Even if black mold grows naturally, it still gets into your lungs. Even if the earth’s heart gently warms the radioactive waters of the hot spring, you’ll still burn. The natural world and the human world of state-sponsored violence are both totally ignorant of the beings that live in them.

不管你聽了幾次 — 狂速、暴力、不可預期。(Z)erpents的音樂將自己從過去的那一瞬間起給抹滅，就像是一塊被避免被測速照相給捕捉到的車牌。像John Zorn或Melt Banana的作品，當人們無法接受這世上最抽象的編曲時，總有人會喜愛。即使慢慢的發了霉，它仍早已侵入你的肺部。即使地心緩緩加熱了溫泉的輻射水池，你還是會燃燒殆盡。大自然和人類的國家暴力都完全忽視在其中生活的生物。

(Z)erpents end everything with “Flotation Divides.” At the seventh minute, the guitar is chiming like cherubs in a cathedral. At the thirteenth music, the tone is no longer human. We’ve reached anarcho-primitivism. At the twentieth minute – well, but look at me. Using minutes to measure this music is as pointless as putting the album on a scale to see how much it weighs. “Flotation Divides” is really a whole other lifetime…

(Z)erpents以’’Flotation Divides’’結束一切，在第七分鐘時 — 吉他如大教堂中的天使鳴響，第十三分鐘時 — 音調已不再屬於人間，我們已抵達無政府原始主義。第二十分鐘時 — 好吧，但好好看著我吧。用分鐘來衡量這音樂是毫無意義的，就像秤這張專輯的重量一樣。“Flotation Divides”是另一個生命尺度....

*註 ： 蓋革計數器又叫蓋革-米勒計數器，是一種用於探測電離輻射的粒子探測器，通常用於探測α粒子和β粒子，也有些型號蓋革計數器可以探測γ射線及X射線。