Swans
Cop

Damn, what sounded so heavy and oppressive in '84?

On the metal front, you can cite works by Venom, Slayer, Bathory, but with their superficial satanism, I add, they almost appear reassuring compared to the harsh reality slapped in our faces by the entity Swans (demonstrating how laughable the elitist intransigence of those who think metal is the most extreme genre on the planet is). On the industrial/noise front, we can mention the sound assaults of Psychic TV, Einstürzende Neubauten, Non, but their avant-garde attitude significantly softens the annihilating impact their experiments can have on our eardrums.

Nothing to do with the proletarian sound of the Swans. Stripped of the intellectual pretensions that have always animated the industrial scene, nothing remains but the poor and desperate sound of dissonant guitars, clattering bass, the slow and uncoordinated beats of those ugly eighties drums. A sonic texture that will be a fundamental influence for seminal bands like Napalm Death and Neurosis. A sonic delirium that borrows the heaviness of Sabbath's sound and cloaks it with the dark shades of the most disturbing noise and the most nihilistic dark.

To get the full picture, imagine in this muck the slurred and paranoid screams of a drunk accusing you because you just took the flask from his hand. It's the desperate singing of Michael Gira, perhaps the nastiest of all, a sort of Iggy Pop cubed, whose nastiness is already apparent in his look: shirt tucked into pants, suspenders, cowboy hat. Someone who certainly doesn't need studs and mascara to scare you. Gira is violent, someone who grew up in the shit, a drug addict since he was fourteen (though some claim twelve, which wouldn't surprise me), carrying a monkey on his back you can't even imagine.

It's hard to explain with the pragmatic language of metal the essence of Swans' music. Violence, nihilism, desolation are not embodied by double bass drums, killer breaks, or growling vocals. Violence, nihilism, and desolation are not goals to be reached but the starting point. It’s Gira’s world vision that drives everything, a vision material and poor in images, confused, representing a bare and squalid world, a reflection of the artist's soul. Just look at the simplicity of the track titles (even in later albums): "Cop," "Job," "This Is Mine," "Time Is Money (Bastard)," "Gang," titles that denote a discomfort that does not pose metaphysical questions or reflective intents about the meaning of existence, but that arises from a life of shit where the problems are the lack of money, the job you don't have, the bastard cop breaking your balls, the punches to the head you get from desperate people like you. An existence, therefore, measured by the parameters of bread, the electricity bill, sex, drugs, beyond which you cannot go because it's impossible to reason about anything else when the basics for subsistence are missing.

A cold objectivity that leaves no room, therefore, for speculative elaborations, poetic intentions, or social denunciation, but only for unconditional pessimism. Revolt and contestation remain unconscious and are unconsciously present in the rejection of the state of things, the malaise of living, the mind-numbing alienation-depression-depravity (which feed each other in a nefarious vicious circle), in tiredness, in hunger, in the abandonment to alcohol and drugs, which no longer serve as a way out, but as life's fuel to keep going, hating oneself (typical in Gira's vision the theme of self-contempt and lack of self-fulfillment) and others, who are inevitably hostile entities.

The raw and weak voice, the sparse lyrics, the words repeated to exhaustion, constitute a why why why obsessively reiterated but inevitably clashing with the wall of incomprehension, or rather, with the lack of will to understand, because oppressed by the fierce blows of harsh reality, we cannot conceive another dimension to the one that afflicts us, that we don't like but must endure. It's like struggling in the shit towards the shit. More real than that is death.

Not all of our output will reveal an agony at these levels: if the EP "Young God" continues on the same coordinates as this "Cop," with "Greed" and "Holy Money" the sound will start to become less monolithic. Without losing in darkness and nihilism, some melodic openings can be found, given by an increased instrumental richness. Piano, acoustic guitar, harmonica, female choirs will become a fundamental part of the Swans sound to come, thanks especially to the contribution of the new entry Jarboe, Gira's female alter ego, his companion. If Gira is an Iggy Pop cubed, Jarboe is a Diamanda Galás to the cube root (quite a couple, no doubt), as her vocals, without carrying the monstrosity of the Greek-American singer, will confer an unsettling and metaphysical aura to her husband's concrete and physical music. A trend that will in time lead to the sick and dark folk of the absolute masterpiece "Children of God" and the equally excellent "White Light from the Mouth of Infinity."

Gira, more and more deeply into the world of folk, after the breakup of the group, will continue offering us a Nick Cave-style country with his Angels of Light and producing young bands for his label Young Gods Records. Has Our Man succumbed to vile commercial temptations? I wouldn't know, in my opinion, no, but after all, what's that saying a single hair…