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Swans, "The Great Annihilator"
One of the few remaining pieces of the digipacked and remastered re-issue puzzle, 1994's The Great Annihilator is reclaimed from Invisible Records for Michael Gira's own Young God Records.
This was a transitive period for Gira and Jarboe's Swans, a natural progression from the previous "bunny" artwork themed albums (White Light From the Mouth of Infinity and Love Of Life) and a premonition of what was to come with the conclusive trilogy (Die Tür Ist Zu, Soundtracks For The Blind and Swans Are Dead). Many of TGA's songs delve into a darker and grittier sound but also maintain melody, mixed moods and brevity. "Celebrity Lifestyle" and "Mother/Father" flirt dangerously with mainstream rock & roll conventions while "Mind/Body/Light/Sound," "My Buried Child," and "Alcohol The Seed" throb with tantric mantras. Tenderness is a distinctive trait of "Blood Promise," "Warm," "Killing For Company," and "Mother's Milk," the last of which features an especially bittersweet vocal by Jarboe.
Lyrical themes follow Gira's ever-present obsessions with the eternally entangled dualities of life and death, love and hate, mind and body, man and God, etc. The title track embraces Stephen Hawking's theory of an omnivorous, universe destroying black hole—science's embodiment of God, perhaps. Near the end Gira invitingly sings "come on in and come inside" in harmony with the title and Jarboe's backing over a spiraling mass of percussion laden rock, perfectly evoking the very nature of said sucker.
To my ears the remastering improves overall clarity but is far from drastic and the bonus track, a bootleg quality live rendition of "I Am The Sun" pales in comparison to the version on Swans Are Dead. No matter. The Great Annihilator is what nearly all Swans albums were and remain to be: powerful, evocative and, ultimately for me, indispensable.
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