Swans Live

Last Friday night I saw Swans live at the Fonda Theatre in Hollywood. This tour, supporting the group's newest record The Glowing Man, is the last in the current line-up Swans founder/mastermind Michael Gira has been utilizing to record a truly stellar run of albums that have completely re-invented/re-invigorated the group over the last few years. I'd not seen Swans live before - I've really only gotten fanatically into them since 2012's The Seer - and I wanted to be sure I did before this iteration ended. It was at amazing; in every sense both an ordeal and a learning experience.

You simply cannot understand the sonic experience of Swans live until you see them. You just can't. When you hear things like 'they play dangerously loud', even if you're not necessarily discounting the statement as hyperbolic, you still just cannot imagine HOW LOUD it is.

Pain. Yes, pain.

And while this is a bit of a bad thing, it is also awesome in the truest sense of that very over-used word. Awe-inspiring. 60% of the experience Friday night was observing the physiological reaction my body was having to the sound waves unleashed upon it. Then there was the psychological reaction, and the emotional. It was, in a very real sense, an altered state. A magickal one. At that volume the music has a palpable physical presence - you know what it's like when something alien invades your personal space? That begins to approach the presence I'm talking about. It was, incredible.

If you have the chance to see Swans before this tour is over and you want something unlike anything else, please go. Michael Gira is a true artist/shaman/catalyst and we need to support people like him, so they continue to do the things they do. But I would add, if you do go, bring ear plugs. You may choose to forgo using them, but at least give yourself the option.

The video is not from the show I saw, but I thought it a good example of what the band looks and sound like live. Without the volume I describe above, of course.

Godflesh @ Henry Fonda Theatre 4/22/14

When word first surfaced circa 2010 that Godflesh was reuniting to play a European festival show I became excited. If it'd been in my budget/schedule to fly to that show I would have, but with all the other tantalizing European line-ups (esp. All Tomorrow's Parties and Minehead which - at least in years past - seem to consistently book many too-good-to-be-true corners of my record collection past/present and future) it's just not in my cards at the moment.

Tarot or credit.

But with Godflesh, Justin K. Broadrick is so prolific that I just knew there would be more shows and maybe a record to boot.

Or, given time, many more records.

So when I had the chance to buy tickets to see Godflesh on their first North American tour in a looong time I did not balk. Originally I had it planned where I was going to see them in Chicago at my beloved Metro and then again in LA several days later. Then there were problems with the bands' visas and the tour was postponed. I ended up not seeing them in Chicago, but the LA show this past Tuesday at the always fantastic Henry Fonda Theatre was something of a dream come true. When they came out and opened with the pummeling Like Rats I knew this was going to go down as one of my most cherished concert experiences.

Special thanks to MBMdrums666 who took some fantastic video of the show and put it up online and also to the awesome 80's metal chick who tore shit up with her dancing and kept our little corner of the Fonda free of others.