Swans – Young God (1984)

January 13, 2025

A slow, harrowing, disgusting crawl through a painful set of songs. Like wading through tar, or something. Production seems infinitely worse than both Filth and Cop before it; the sound has this strange hollowness to it; as if you’ve been dealt a catastrophic blow to the head and are listening to this whilst drifting in and out of consciousness. “I Crawled” is easily the highlight here, and the song went on to reoccur several times in various different versions of Swans, so it’s very cool to see the original gestation.

I also remember Justin Broadrick name-dropping this EP as one of the main influences on Godflesh’s sound, so it also has a special place in my heart for being how I first heard of Swans (lmao).

For what it’s worth, I have this 12″ EP, and it sounds absolutely enormous compared to the digital version.