Swans
Filth

THE REVIEW

Don't be misled by the black gums; this is a perfect set of teeth. We can imagine a lithe, lean, tense, toned, intact physique.

"Be strong. Be tough. Resist temptations. Clench your fist. Resist. Flex your muscles. Look straight ahead." Even on the first 12" EP under the name Circus Mort, a naked man in a plastic pose with his hand pressing on his genitals, on the back the future swan Michael Gira, with an androgynous face and Hitlerian fringe, alongside the monozygotic twins Braun - keyboards and bass - a portent of unspeakable genetic experiments. There is no irony in all of this, a raw and harsh truth that spares no one. In early '80s New York, perhaps everything was allowed; had it happened in England, the Swans would have been crucified, in the center, with the two thieves Death In June and Joy Division branded as sinners for their veiled Nazi-like allusions. But if for JD it was an aesthetic, cultural attraction, a tepid apology perhaps dictated by the bored reads of a restless Ian Curtis between breaks from his petty-bourgeois employment, for Gira it was not the same.

The biographical notes speak of a terrible childhood, on the brink of survival, which forced him to create an impenetrable defensive shell, a descent into the depths to hold onto something stable and incorruptible, to then have the strength to slowly rise back up to breathe again. The early period of the Swans is inevitably marked by violence: the lyrics are gunshots, categorical imperatives spat out as if they were the tablets of law. The music is the equivalent of a brake-less tracked vehicle, a steel plant running day and night without stopping. In "Stay Here" the bass pumps mercilessly, the guitar emits incandescent sparks, the voice commands the rhythm -Flex your muscles- a well-oiled and unstoppable mechanism that slows down viscously until it halts with metallic clangs and growls ante-litteram; in "Blackout" guitar screeches, the voice a groan of suffering, the drums whipping on iron sheets, recorded live from a steel mill. With "Power for Power" something human peeks through, a merciful and compassionate guitar worms into the inexorable mechanism.

Industrial music then, but not the result of experiences dictated by the awareness of an aging world (Pere Ubu and Cabaret Voltaire) nor by a grand plan to unmask the aberrations and contradictions of modern civilization (Throbbing Gristle), but rather the only possible and conceivable music at that specific time. Personal music that arises from the guts of a man who has almost lost all hope in the future. We are not allowed to listen to this music while remaining ourselves. Gira forces us to immerse in his world: only this way can we save ourselves.

The Swans have thrown the stone without hiding the hand. And so far, no one has picked it up.