Swans
Swans Are Dead

"Back in my day, we were romantics, we still believed we could solve everything face to face with a good shot of a gun," so declared a line in an old western film. The face-to-face gunshot was fired by the Swans on that final 1997 tour, announcing a sacred death, the double CD "Swans Are Dead" as a definitive testament and warning, the Swans are dead.
In an ideal world, it would have been so, ending in beauty, in a glorious and heart-wrenching way, with this sort of testament, an exculpatory Stations of the Cross, a self-flagellation aimed at reaching "other" states, finishing at the apex, the peak, with that stifled scream in the last seconds of "Blood Promise."
The album, comprised of 2 CDs, the white one as a testament to the pre-soundtracks tour of '95, and the black, '97 final tour, in the white disc we find an absolutely devastating band, which live anticipated some tracks from Soundtracks For The Blind, "Helpless Child" or "The Sound," among others, they almost instill awe in their epic and desperate advancement, brilliant melodies overwhelmed by all-encompassing distortion mantras, there is also the best version of "I See Them All Lined Up" ever recorded, a squalid and murky pile of clanking noise.
Black CD: the end of the story, "Feel Happiness" devours everything, a maelstrom that attracts everything to itself, insurmountable sound walls, a sense of sacredness envelops every progression, every rise to the top, 16 minutes and more to annul any type of consciousness, everything crumbles, the austere melody that pierces the sound wall gives way to Gira's voice, painful and restless, sinking into those lulling arpeggios, "Low Life Form" and "Not Alone" are deforming noise prayers, hammering and dirty, a martyrdom, a destabilizing purifying ritual.
The tracks reserved for Jarboe, here at her peak in mastery of her interpretative means, are terrifyingly sensual, expressionist, and theatrical. In "Blood On Your Hands" she proclaims a sort of deathly blues-gospel, on a minimal electronic base, the reinterpretation of "I Crawled," anxious, agitated, and nerve-wracking, with a hoarse, suffocating, and panting Jarboe, "CHOKE ME..CHOKE ME... MAKE ME FEEL GOOD," the finale is once again a cathartic and theatrical implosion, with the voice now transformed into a deformed monster.
"Blood Promise": now it's truly the end of the story, a track that in its album version barely exceeds 4 minutes here is completely subverted and disfigured until it reaches moments of pure transcendence in its quarter-hour duration, Gira painfully recites the lyrics, the only thing remaining the same as the studio version, everything contorts on itself, chasms and precipices, a mystical stream of consciousness that has lost all conscious reality, a wonderful circular noise mantra, without return.
As previously mentioned, in an ideal world, it would be so, but since this isn't an ideal world, the Swans returned, they returned a dozen years after the release of this double CD, a rebirth that made (and still makes) many rejoice, but not all, perhaps not that old man, that old man who still romantically thinks it's better to leave "face to face, with a good shot of a gun."
SWANS ARE DEAD.