Swans
Filth

THE REVIEW

"Flex your muscles/ Flex your muscles/ Flex your muscles/ Flex your muscles/ Be hard, be strong/ Be hard, be hard/ Hard, hard/ And come back for more/ Ah, come back/ Ah, come back"

Besides being industrial nightmares that shattered metal, the Swans' records were industrial nightmares that shattered nerves, and ultimately, that was their true merit. Accepting to let Michael Gira and his "swans" enter your life means accepting to coexist with psychiatric drugs for life; alternatively, you can just surrender to the shamanic and neurotic crescendo of their compositions, which still amounts to blowing your mind, so think this through before delving into this band.

It goes without saying that you're an idiot if you think this music is useless, and even more so if you think it's beautiful. You're the grand vizier of dorks if you discovered them thanks to their recent reunion (a category to which I, for example, belong). But you're also an idiot if you truly listen to them, for reasons that should be clear to you by now, otherwise, it was never worth it, right?

In short, what I want to say in this review is equivalent to what - I'm sure - the Swans wanted to tell us when they took some damn slabs from foundries and smashed them against our skulls like heroin-addicted grizzlies in withdrawal. That is, whoever you are, wherever you live, whatever your belief or sexual orientation, not even a hundred years separate you from the period when your species accepted being dominated by beasts that locked men and women in concentration camps and melted them alive in crematorium ovens. So, get moving and do something.