Filth is the debut studio album by American experimental rock band Swans. It was released in 1983 through Neutral Records, following the release of the band's self-titled debut EP in 1982. Though it did not receive much contemporary attention, Filth has since been recognized as ahead of its time and significant to heavy genres of music.
Musically, the album is bleak, grinding, and deliberately repetitive, defined by two bassists persistently doubling over the same chord. The two drummers, Jonathan Kane and Roli Mosimann, play chaotically and angularly, occasionally mixing in percussion from metal straps striking tables, and the distorted guitar of Norman Westberg plays in a grating fashion. The vocals of Swans frontman Michael Gira are scathing and direct, covering topics of social decay, corruption, rape, and abuse of power.
Background
After the release of Swans' 1982 debut EP, frontman Michael Gira and drummer Jonathan Kane were the only members to remain in the band. In 1983, when the band began work on its first full-length release, Gira was poor and sustained himself by doing occasional labor in the construction industry. New York City was, as Gira described, "in the throes of decay"; his neighborhood mainly consisted of derelict buildings, and he often heard gunfire during the night. This bleak environment proved vital not only for the crushing sound of Swans' early material, but for the no wave genre at large. Also important to the conception of Filth was the blues genre, which helped Kane define the "crawling" and "brutal" swing of the music. Because Gira wanted a more rigid, stiff percussion style, Kane left after recording Filth, though some of his swinging style persisted through the second drummer, Roli Mosimann.
Filth saw the introduction of Norman Westberg to Swans, who would remain a primary contributor throughout much of the band's career. Gira described Westberg's playing as "a vast, sustaining chordal sound", and the latter's addition to the band helped solidify it as a serious musical venture; previously, Swans had been fueled by "constant bickering, haranguing, and pervasive mean-spiritedness", according to Kane. Filth was recorded in the studio of Vanguard Records, a place that Gira described as "massive" and "very famous" and that Kane called "beautiful" with "high ceilings and great acoustics". Gira played bass and shouted vocals, Kane played drums, Mosimann played drums and occasionally struck hard surfaces with a metal strap, Westberg provided guitar, and another new member, Harry Crosby, also played bass. The cover of the album came from Mosimann's girlfriend, a dental assistant, who had spare X-ray photographs at hand.
Composition and content
Musically, Filth is a heavy album often noted by critics for its uncompromising noise and brutality; AllMusic's Ned Raggett described it as "angry-beyond-all-anger", and Sasha Geffen of Consequence of Sound called it the "ugliest, most brutal music possible". The sound of Filth is defined by the band's unusual composition: two bass players, two drummers (both of which have access to miscellaneous percussive items), and one guitarist all accompanied by a series of programmed tape loops. Though based in the then-dying genre of no wave, Kory Grow of Rolling Stone recognized Filth as "primal art rock at its most vitriolic" and as anticipatory of industrial music, sludge metal, and noise rock; Metal Hammer's Chris Chantler also recognized Filth and other early Swans material as integral to the development of sludge metal. Gene Armstrong of the Arizona Daily Star described Filth as "an industrial-strength brand of grinding dirge-rock". Some publications criticized the album for being, as Trouser Press put it, "squalor without catharsis", but many saw this unrelenting nature as captivating and unique. Filth presents its music as walls of noise, or "slabs of sound"; Gira would come up with simple bass chords and simply "slam" them repeatedly without much change, clanging rhythms of both traditional drums and more unusual instruments (like metal tables) were then built around that, resulting in a "roar" driven by overwhelming sound rather than a predetermined beat.