Swans’ grand triumph in year-end lists and polls seems nothing less than heroic, and it’s well deserved. Their approach is defined by violence with the artistic vision of a rottweiler. Even at their most subtle, there’s always a suggestion of blood engorging veins and curdling around vocal cord; its implications whispered to chilling effect.
They also represent a strain of music that influenced miscreants the world over. The Swans diaspora has one of its best prophets incarnated in Matthew Bower, whose Skullflower project pummels and grinds in a way all its own. Of course, he acknowledges the root of their sound.
Bower came from a much more severe musical background than Swans. Some of the Broken Flag label releases housed some of the most hateful and depraved words this side of the Westboro Baptist Church. Yet, Skullflower weren’t offensive or repulsive. Its aggression is a means to develop a psychedelic sort of art; tribal drums punch the soundscape throughout, guitars pummel with feedback and beat the crap out of the listener with dissonant chords, but it’s aggression is never directed at him/her. The feeling is that the violence is stopped within.
Most of their music sounds improvised but seems to have a direction and craft, something not entirely present in records of this kind. IIIrd Gatekeeper feels like an abstract painting in the way it unfolds and splatters sound in a chaotic but magnificent way. While songs have always been the cornerstone of Swans, Skullflower take the approach and atmosphere of their main influence to make something sprawling, pointing another direction in which Gira and company might go had they taken Bower’s route.
Matthew Bower has had a share of brilliant bands (Total, Pure, Hototogisu, Sunroof!), but Skullflower, like a gang beatdown in the middle of an alley late at night, remains undeniably memorable.
