Review Summary: Nothing beats them like a cop. Or this album, for that matter.
You know how in
Zero Punctuation’s review of
Dark Souls Yahtzee likens playing
Dark Souls to wandering into a dark shed, stepping on a rake and getting blatted in the face, and eventually getting raked so many times you start to get really into it? I can’t help but feel like I have a similar relationship with
Swans sometimes, especially their mid-’80s albums when they were decidedly at their most punishing. The years from
Filth to
Holy Money sound like a band that wants nothing more than anyone who deigns to listen to them to fuck off, and is constantly trying to find methods of bludgeoning listeners over the head with mere sound, and yet for some reason I keep coming back. So does this album actually have anything that makes me actively want to listen to it again, or is this just a bizarre musical variant of Stockholm syndrome, and I was perfectly justified in starting from
Children of God onwards? Let’s find out.
The opener “Half Life” is an effective mood setter; the band takes the dirty, strident sound of their debut
Filth and slows it down significantly. I find it oddly engaging for a song whose structure is mostly just a chromatic riff that is as follows: G, F#, F,
*DISSONANCE*, repeat ad nauseum because it’s a Swans album. Perhaps I just like this song because there’s more variety to frontman Michael Gira’s lyrics than the music itself, which presents a world of conformists living in fear of retribution should they err in even the smallest and most minor of ways.
“Job” has a strange sort of stuttering pace to it, which makes every measure feel like a series of false starts punctuated by crash cymbals while Gira growls lyrics that juxtapose nine-to-five monotony with grotesque dismemberment. It does overstay its welcome somewhat, though the imagery at least left a strong impression. “Why Hide” has especially prominent bass that’s so low it barely sounds like it’s hitting notes, which proves a solid foundation for Gira shouting about some form of abuse that eventually culminates in the mantra of “why hide the lie?”
“Clay Man” is a real lurcher of a track that staggers through a narrative of someone so weak-willed that his flesh is easily molded. It almost feels like the song’s trying to do the same to the listener, especially during the last minute where the guitars make one concerted atonal strike after another after every percussive hit. Out of all the track listing, “Your Property” is the most reminiscent of
Filth; it has the most active and animated drumming in the entire album, and that alone makes it stand out from the rest of the record, and it has the closest thing to a groove that can be considered as such in an album as atonal as this.
The title track is easily the most oppressive song on the album; the song is nearly seven minutes long, and truly relishes in its evil slowness. The lyrics are also probably at their darkest; at any rate, it certainly doesn’t get more direct than this:
“Nothing beats them like a cop with a club
Nobody rapes them like a cop with a club”
The percussion is especially impactful, especially the snare that never fails to accentuate the words “cop” and “hurts” again and again.
“Butcher” is probably the most tense song, dealing in direct imagery that alludes to prostitution and sexual violence. There’s something about the riffing that makes the track feel like it could be a prelude to music that’s constantly being teased and never quite arrives. I’m not quite sure how they did it, but it gives the graphic lyrics an uncomfortable amount of emphasis. “Thug” offers one last auditory beatdown, liberally employing feedback. Sadly, this is in my opinion Gira’s worst performance on the album; it doesn’t have the same energy he had for most of the rest of the record. In fact, he actually sounds kind of exhausted, which might’ve been the point, but I do still find it kind of disappointing, because this is the only part of the album where it doesn’t feel like Gira’s trying to kill me.
I suspect whether or not you’ll like this album will heavily depend on how much you enjoy this era of the Swans discography; in my experience, their pre-
Children of God material can be quite divisive, with some either loving the pacing, unsubtle darkness, and being punched in the face with atonal guitars, or being indifferent to these early years because albums like
Cop aren’t nearly as nuanced as some of the albums that would follow suit, especially those from
Children of God onwards. Speaking for myself, I certainly find
Cop an interesting contrast to
Filth; where
Filth was often groovy in a bizarre and twisted way,
Cop is so measured that the first time I listened to it I wondered if I was listening to honest-to-God doom metal. Unfortunately, this approach means that some of the songs can become interchangeable and blur together when trying to remember them, which is why I was listening to each individual song again as I was writing about them. A lot of the songs also have a tendency to go on too long for my taste by at least a minute, or sometimes two minutes, though I didn’t bring that up often because I feared being equally annoying by saying so. While I love the opener and title track, and admittedly like the album, I don’t recommend it lightly. If you love noise rock, or discovered Swans through their 2010s material and want to know how they got from here to being the strange conglomeration of genres and instruments that they are now, then you might find it worth your time. Otherwise… I don’t know, maybe listen to
Streetcleaner by
Godflesh instead; it’s kind of like early Swans, but with slightly more variety.
Favourite tracks: “Cop”, “Half Life”, “Your Property”
Least favourite track(s): “Job”, “Thug”
