Review Summary: Ever wondered what the root of all evil sounds like?
Before I began listening to Filth, I had the expectation of it being sludgy, and gross, but still leaving room for standard hard rock elements. I pictured Swans as a precursor to bands such as Melvins or Sleep, with similar styles of sludge and/or doom metal. Instead, I was met with a type of music that I hadn't heard before, and an album that did not forgive.
Filth lives up to the name it was given. It represents the absolute peak of everything we see as wrong in the world. This is an album that comes from the bottom of a seemingly bottomless pit; it comes from a place below Hell. It comes from a place that would make the most twisted serial killer or ruthless terrorist cower in fear of it. I don't think that this place is all that far-fetched, however. I think that this dirty, raw, and plainly disgusting place is a very real one, that embodies the spirit of what we know "evil" to be. The sick-minded creature that Michael Gira and company have shown us definitely exists, only it's buried so far back in our subconscious that we've failed to realise its existence. Filth is an album with purpose. It's an album that I believe was designed to show us how ***ed up we all really are.
Musically, Filth is raw, aggressive, and loud. Every second of every track on this album screams pain, desperation, and torture. Gira's bass pounds through each song keeping them alive, even while screaming lyrics about cutting throats and killing gang victims. The completely un-melodic sounds of Norman Westberg's awfully toned guitar provide a fantastic balance to the rest of the instrumentation, while still giving the guitar parts a life of their own. The songs on this album sound as though they're constantly falling apart, but never actually reaching the point of being completely disjointed.
Even when the album finishes, and the listener is able to abandon this horrible world that Swans have brought to life, it doesn't truly end. This disgusting mess of gore, murder, and pain is eternal, and very alive throughout the human race today.
That said, this was one of the most terrible musical experiences that I have ever put myself through, and in a sense, I almost feel that it was meant to be. No matter how far this album dragged me down into its evil, I was never able to enjoy it. Each note only made me want to abandon it more, and to get myself out before I was stuck there forever. It's an album with purpose, and it fulfills this purpose in the best (and worst) ways it possibly can.
No words that I have used or could use to describe this album will do it justice. Good or bad (or worse), this is an album that needs to be heard to be fully understood. I would recommend that you go and listen to this if you haven't before, because whether you like what you're hearing or not, it's a worthwhile experience.
