SWANS — Greed (review)

Album · 1986 · Non-Metal

4/5 · 2024-06-23
siLLy puPPy

The year 1986 was the busiest year of SWANS’ existence as it was undergoing a transmogrifying event to emerge from the New York City no wave underground as a truly inventive source of musical bleakness. The year opened with its stand alone single “Time Is Money (Bastard) / Sealed in Skin” which introduced SWANS fans to a new fascination with industrial rock. The single also was the first appearance of Jarboe who while limited to mere screaming on this release, established a connection with the band that would significantly alter SWANS’ style up to her departure in 1997. Her contributions were essential for the next stage of SWANS which proved to expand their sound exponentially into various arenas of experimental rock.

It was also a fruitful time of rediscovery as the GREED / Holy Money recording sessions that lasted from June 1985 - January 1986 produced enough material to release not one but two albums in ’86 and then the year was topped off with a massive tour and the first SWANS live release “Public Castration Is a Good Ideal.” But wait! THere’s more! The band ended the year with yet another EP titled “A Screw.” It was the year of the dollar sign since every one of these releases featured a prominently artistic variation of the $ sign all of which signified the biggest changes in the entire history of the band’s long run as an established experimental rock act. Together these $ releases seemed to collectively express a total disdain for the world of power and wealth obtained through the financial fraud the world has been overtaken by.

GREED was the first album to emerge after the “Time Is Money” single and therefore the first album to feature Jarboe as a permanent member of the band only this time her backing vocals are more prominent than mere background screaming. Her wordless vocals provide a new form of instrumentation to add to the overall depressive atmosphere of GREED which found the band shedding its no wave origins and blossoming into a strange no wave / industrial rock hybrid. Fortified by two bassists and THREE drummers, GREED is percussion dominated powerhouse that finds SWANS moving on from the caustic guitar driven angst of the first two albums and instead finding a new form of depressive despair as its main emotional outlet.

Brilliantly continuing the essential aspects of no wave that avoid melodic motifs like the plague, GREED maintains that abstract detached feel of the first two albums only adds implied melodies carried out through atonality and dissonance. The plodding percussive drives make this album sound like a funeral procession and i wouldn’t be surprise if funeral doom metal was inspired by this stage of SWANS’ career. GREED is a rather bleak affair with seven tracks that add up to almost 38 minutes of nihilistic and ominous repetitive processions through some of the darkest musical tones and timbres you can experience. The album has been compared to a bizarre religious cult ritual soundtrack but i find it more like a form of oozing anarchy.

The opening “Fool” offers something completely new to the SWANS playbook, namely a demented piano that does indeed offer a somewhat melodic approach however this tactic restrains itself and allows the cyclical loops to let the dark atmospheres to play around. Gira’s vocals have moved on from raging angst to a more contemplative and depressive tone. His droning vocal style of yore actually sings on this opening track and thus the new SWANS is born however the opening track only ushers in the new era as the album continues in a similarly minimalist approach that the no wave years employed. The album also features samples, tape operations and other sound effects as well as Jarboe’s blood curdling baking vocals and the aforementioned piano parts.

The name of the game with GREED is pure dissonance and atonal counterpoints that all conspire to craft one disturbing melancholic march through complete musical alienation and sparseness. The incessant flow of percussive beats on steroids is punctuated by moments of silence, the abrasive guitar and bass lines that accompany and the contrapuntal effect of Gira’s downer vocal style along with Jarboe’s nails on the chalkboard vocal approach. The album is incessant in how it ratchets up the tension until the more caustic than thou grand finale “Money Is Flesh” which just pummels away with staccato tom drumming and atonal guitar freakery. This is true industrial bleakness bliss! This particular track sounds unique compared to the others as it has some sort of bellowing sample sound that wails away.

While many consider this period one of SWANS’ weakest, i have to say that i love this album quite a bit as it delves into some of the most barren soundscapes possible and yet finds ways to subtly offer some of the weirdest and strangest alienating results. While the angst had been channeled to despair, it makes a full comeback by the end of the album and it ends with a barren bang. So many adjectives can describe GREED: discouraging, bleak, dismal, gloomy, hopeless, dreary, sombre, raw, desolate, harsh, severe but most of all this album is tempestuous as it has an unresolved uneasiness about it that works so well! Obviously this sort of extremity is an acquired taste and i have no idea how i acquired it but if you accept what the band is going for on its own terms then you can’t deny that SWANS did an absolutely excellent job of conveying what it aimed for. You may not like it but you can’t deny that the results of its sweltering banter is not effective in what it sets out to achieve which i guess is engage is musical sado-masochism!