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Friday Full-Length: Swarm of the Lotus, The Sirens of Silence

Swarm of the Lotus, The Sirens of Silence (2005)

When I think of music as being scathing, the standard I’m usually applying is Swarm of the Lotus. Before everyone and their cousin was walking around wearing His Hero is Gone shirts pretending the stuff they were listening to wasn’t just repackaged deathcore chestbeating, the Baltimorean outfit melded hardcore metal and extreme sludge in a way that sounded not only like the end of the world, but like the end of the world you were actively causing. The Sirens of Silence, which was their second and final album, came out in 2005. It was released through Abacus Recordings, which was one of Century Media‘s imprints, specifically designed for hardcore and metalcore, which made Swarm of the Lotus something of an outlier because they weren’t necessarily just about chugging their way into an emo part or a breakdown, and such a huge part of their impact came from the way they seemed able to slam their tone a hammer one second in “The Great Masquerade” and the next sprint off to grind at a sprint through “Vertigo.” I remember seeing them in New York at a place called The Pyramid in 2004. They usually had heavy shows in the basement, but Swarm of the Lotus were upstairs in the main room and it was box that when they started playing you just felt like there was no way out. It was manic. A chaotic, angular gnashing sound. The band were supporting their debut, When White Becomes Black, and their take was utterly ferocious and raw in a way that made perfect sense for the wider turmoil of those times, what with the apparently endless war and all. It’s the sound of human-caused global warming.

The Sirens of Silence is a more complex album than its predecessor in just about every way. I won’t take anything away from Swarm of the Lotus‘ debut — quite frankly, if the whole thing was on YouTube or Bandcamp, I’d be closing out the week with it — but from the initial winding surge of two-minute opener “Hookworm” through the sudden turn to a relatively patient march in “Call to Abandon,” it’s an album that 14 years later I still don’t really have a handle on what to expect from it. With guitarist Peter Maturi and bassist Chris Csar sharing vocal duties, Cole Krickenberger holding down guitar and Jon-John Michaud on drums, Swarm of the Lotus were able to pull off striking turns of approach while staying true to the aggressive sensibility at work beneath. The vocals still hurt my throat just hearing them, and seem to have bite that of all the screams swarm-of-the-lotus-sirens-of-silenceI’ve encountered in my time, realized a physical presence that almost no one else can match. Through the repeated lines, “If you could hold your last breath/How much longer do you think you could live?” in “Call to Abandon” and the searing shouts coinciding with the all-tumult assault in the back half of the subsequent “The Great Masquerade,” they harness a pain and disaffection that goes beyond sounding angry or metal or hardcore. In the angular “Yan Hou,” the filthy death groove of “Jackie G,” and the landmark slowdown of “Snowbeast,” Swarm of the Lotus unite in purpose in a way that seems coherent and yet doesn’t contradict the rawness on display. That is, they’re able to pull off these changes and expand their scope in a way that doesn’t make the elements tying them together or the moods they’re working in sound like a put-on. The hints toward melody in “Snowbeast” are a crucial moment for the band, where they bring in Melvinsian lumber and break to a quiet minimalist stretch before launching into an instrumental apex that’s a standout from both records, let alone just this second one.

What might’ve been side B starts with “Needles and Knives,” which is fitting enough. The tempo stays in the middle range for the brief instrumental and it feeds directly into “The Insect Trust Fund,” which brings together the stomp of “Snowbeast” with the meaner approach of “The Great Masquerade” as it works toward a massive, lurching finish that’s “heavy” in every sense of the word. It’s fitting they follow it with “Vertigo,” since it takes a couple minutes to recover from the fist-to-the-temple at the end of “The Insect Trust Fund,” but there’s little quarter afforded as “Vertigo” grinds and slams its way forward, aligning briefly at about two minutes into its 2:46 around a riff that drives to its end while still reeling up ahead of the start of “Judas,” which bring back some of the cleaner-ish shouting in its midsection and finishes with a plotted lead line that coincides with a half-time drum progression and a move toward genuine singing that Swarm of the Lotus never really try again. It’s buried in the mix, but it works, and it speaks to the growth of the band that was underway and never got fleshed out. They draw various sides together for the penultimate “House at the Bottom of the Sea” and cap with the all-out madness of “Nightmare Paint,” leaving behind a rumble that to my damaged ears just sounds like a speaker cabinet repair bill in the making. Even with fewer than 10 seconds of purposeful silence left, one almost expects Swarm of the Lotus to come back and renew the assault like some kind of horror movie monster refusing to die no matter how many times it’s killed.

Maybe that’s just the residual trauma on the frontal cortex brought on by listening, but Swarm of the Lotus indeed stayed dead, more or less. In 2015, they posted a single on Bandcamp, and they’ve put demos up for their two albums — presumably the albums themselves are still under someone else’s copyright — but they haven’t done really anything to follow that up. Maturi and Csar in the meantime released an awaited EP last year with the more outwardly grinding Graven called Heirs of Discord (review here), which, if it wasn’t named with the band’s relationship to Swarm of the Lotus in mind, easily could’ve been. That record was a beast, and in several ways more directly extreme than Swarm of the Lotus seemed to want to be, but the level of sonic catharsis that When White Becomes Black and The Sirens of Silence bring is not something so readily manifest.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

I needed that sonic catharsis this week, a kind of purging of the negativity I’ve been feeling all week, that kind of mouth-turned-down radioactive misery. Where’s the pill for that? Yesterday was a bit better, kind of coming out of it, but Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday were just fucking wretched. Doesn’t help that I’ve had the same headache since Saturday either. Still have that going. I’ve been on a regular ibuprofen regimen, but by Wednesday morning I was hearing a kid’s voice suggesting the possibility of a tumor in my brain à la Kindergarten Cop.

I’d say it’s not a tumor, but I don’t know that.

More likely, exhaustion and I popped something on stage last weekend with Clamfight because I don’t know how to breathe and sing anymore even to the minimal degree I ever did. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s this. Life event for yours truly, and worth the headache in the grand scheme.

So, perspective. I’m a lucky boy. Knowing that and living it are different things. Usually I just live like a dick.

Notes for next week:

MON 03/11 SWEET CHARIOT TRACK PREMIERE; OBSIDIAN SEA TRACK PREMIERE/REVIEW.
TUE 03/12 GONE COSMIC PREMIERE/REVIEW; MIDAS TRACK PREMIERE.
WED 03/13 CURSED TONGUE RECORDS ANNOUNCE/PREMIERE; SUPERLYNX ALBUM STREAM.
THU 03/14 THE GOLDEN GRASS PREMIERE/REVIEW.
FRI 03/15 KINGS DESTROY REVIEW; HORSEBURNER TRACK PREMIERE.

All subject to change of course. It’s extra busy because the week after is the Quarterly Review, which is early again because it was either early or late and I figured the less stress the better. So I’m making it stressful anyway. Because that’s what I do.

Thanks to everyone who asked me anything yesterday. I was worried I wouldn’t get any questions, so even if you were just goofing around, your time and interest were appreciated.

Okay, that’s all I’ve got. Thanks for reading. Great and safe weekend. Forum, Radio, merch at Dropout.

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One Response to “Friday Full-Length: Swarm of the Lotus, The Sirens of Silence

  1. Mike H says:

    I went a month with the same headache once. It was awful. Nothing helped. NOTHING. I would have gone to a witch doctor, shaman…drank eye of newt…anything. So when it came up that I should try a chiropractor (something I have previously been vehemently opposed to), I did. Gone. One visit and it was gone within hours. I learned a lot. Something to consider. Also ask around for referrals from trusted sources as there are (like with anything) shitty ones out there who will only make matters worse in the long run. Good luck.

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