Spike Magazine

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Feature [published September 2003]
Swans: Swans’ Song
Chris Mitchell on the end of Michael Gira’s intense, undefinable and
deafeningly loud musical outfit Swans
The history of music is littered with the debris of those
who paid dearly for being different. From the Stooges
through to Suicide and the Birthday Party, there are
countless individuals and outfits who have, in retrospect,
redefined the shape of music and yet been critically
reviled or simply ignored during their own time.
It’s a classic storyline, part of the mythos of rock’n’roll
– that the culture vultures have to wait until such explosions
of creative rage and violent self-expression have
self-immolated themselves before they dare go near the
still-smouldering corpse. Only death makes such music
safe for consumption.
On March 15 this year at London’s tiny LA2 venue,
such a death occurred. Michael Gira, for 15 years a
self confessed dictator over an ever changing line-up
of musicians, finally brought about the end of Swans.
Ironically, the spectre of death which hung over the
Swans’ final, funereal tour as it crossed from America
to Europe drew huge audiences, even as Gira spoke in
interviews of the indifference his music had faced during
the last decade and a half. As is usual, only when we
realise what we’re losing do we understand its value.
BUY Swans music online from and
Gira is not a defeated, bitter individual, however.
The death of Swans has been for him something of a
relief – the shedding of 15 years of misconceptions and
wornout reputations. Like all great bands, Gira hates
Swans being categorised, not so much out of petulance
as frustration with the refusal of critics to understand
that a band can be more than one-dimensional.
Ever since Swans emerged from New York in the
early 80s, they defied description. Albums like Cop
and Filth were works of unremitting cerebral and sonic
violence which still remain unparalleled, combining
the incessant industrial harshness of drum machines
with stomach churning bass and howled vocals.
Managing to make it from beginning to end of one of
these early records is a voyage you won’t easily forget.
Bands like Ministry and Nine Inch Nails wouldn’t even
feature on the early Swans’ Richter scale. The track
titles alone – ‘Time Is Money (Bastard)’, ‘Greed’, ‘A
Screw’ – reflect Gira’s state of mind at the time. “I was
a hard-assed, people-hating motherfucker in the early
days,” he said recently in an interview with Silencer. “I
mean I was a pretty violent and aggressive, disturbed
506
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