Swans
Children Of God

THE REVIEW

Among the horror poses, zombie costumes, piercing screams to the rhythm of disco music, and many bands caught up in the dark fever, the Swans undoubtedly represented an artistic example of unattainable value.

Formed in the early '80s by Mike Gira, a rock damned with a tumultuous past, they immediately stood out for the "heaviness" of their sound, a devastating tank that rolls its tracks over the debris of the human soul. Over time, especially thanks to the addition of Jane Jarboe in 1985, pianist and Gira's partner, the sound became more tempered, always marked by immense gashes of pain, but with a more intellectual approach, almost a kind of Gothic chamber music.

Children Of God is the example of this new course and perhaps represents the masterpiece of all '80s dark music.
The album immediately stands out for the notable variety of the tracks. It ranges from the lugubrious tone of Gira's living-dead voice over heavy metal distortions to Jarboe's paradisiacal solfeggio with classical accompaniment. This cocktail, besides being unique in the panorama, gives the album an irresistible charm, but most of all highlights the depth of the Swans project, certainly light years away from the many "cardboard" bands that were rampant at the time.

The whole album is permeated by a biblical vocabulary, in fact, it is primarily a concept about redemption and sin.
The heavy cadence of "New Mind" welcomes the listener into the inferno of Gira's soul. His Luciferian baritone voice declaims verses duetting with a background chorus of the damned, while an intermittent church organ punctuates with chilling phrases.
But soon after, you enter Jarboe's enchanted garden: "In My Garden" is indeed a very delicate lullaby for her siren-like voice, on guitar arpeggios and flute solfeggios. A track full of mysticism, alien and indefinable, from a paradisiacal landscape over which a sense of impending tragedy is palpable. It's almost like listening to more sinister and anguished Popol Vuh.
The sky grows more cloudy on the apocalyptic gospel-folk of "Our Love Lies", where Gira again becomes the master of the house.
The menacing chamber ballet of "Blood And Honey" is another masterpiece of looming catastrophe where Jarboe's voice becomes malevolent and plaintive, elevated on the altar of evil by resounding guitar strokes and ominous electronic phrases.
"Girl, You Are Not Real" is another beautiful icy folk song, a cold ritual pronounced by Gira's catacombal voice. The great difference is made by the arrangements, where the class gap compared to the rest of the company emerges conspicuously. The Swans demonstrate a truly refined taste for dark atmospheres and achieve a real mystical stasis in the slower moments, which is counterweighted by a grim and damned register in the more violent ones.
The nightmare marching at a solemn pace of "Real Love" represents the hybrid of these two faces. Gira elevates himself as a true priest, while an epic accordion punctuates the whole with a chilling lament.
The title track, with its slow-paced gait, could have taken the dance floors by storm if only it had been sped up, instead Jarboe's medieval-like singing "limits" itself to granting another masterpiece, on a damned martial cadence and a heavy-metal riff.

After this unsettling journey is over, one can only be stunned in front of this timeless gem.
Anyone who will engage with gothic-industrial in the future will surely owe a debt to their great lesson.