Swans. The name alone seems somewhat blunt and mysterious, which reflects the nature of their music. As Michael Gira himself put it, swans are majestic creatures, with ugly temperaments. This majestic, yet ugly sound would prove to be effective on releases such as Children of God and The Great Annihilator, but their beginnings seem to stick to the violent temperaments. Their sophomore record, Cop, is easily the best example of this, but there’s only so much pummeling one can do before it becomes stale. So, with the recruitment of Jarboe, addition of softer dynamics, and the growth of their platter of instruments, Swans began to understand this. The result is a rather intriguing record known as Greed. Greed is best described as the stepping stone between the epic feeling of 90s Swans, and the brutal attack of early 80s Swans. They mesh together the beautiful elements of their sound, as well as the filthy elements of their sound (no pun intended). For instance, the opener “Fool”, is led by a piano instead of noise and feedback, or how the title track is full of Jarboe’s majestic backing vocals. Still though, the atmosphere is bleak and noisy, with pounding bass and drums being used on nearly every track. As a whole, the album is pieced together quite nicely, but generally sticks to the aforementioned sounds. The pace is generally at a crawling speed, the songs maintain a beautifully noisy sound, and they like to drone on and repeat lines in an attempt to hypnotize the listener. Unfortunately though, this is the element they had not yet mastered.