Gig review: Swans at Project House, Leeds

Apparently in the band’s uncompromisingly abrasive earlier days, Swans leader and sole original member Michael Gira devised ways to make it harder for audience members to flee from their intimidatingly loud live performances.

Apart from anyone having to rush out for transport connections as Swans continue to roil on well past the two-hour mark, it’s doubtful that anyone is eager leave tonight. If anything, it’s probable that more people would like to join the enthusiastic sold-out audience on the Leeds stop of what is reportedly the final tour for the current ‘big sound’ edition of Swans (although the group is due to continue in other forms).

Performing as a seven-piece, Swans sound almost unbelievably vital and potent for a band who first emerged from New York’s No Wave scene over 40 years ago.

Although the albums Swans has released in the 21st century are a more accessible listen than the group’s confrontationally heavy earlier releases, the records can feel somewhat claustrophobic with their white-knuckled intensity, messianic incantations and relentless darkness.

Plying their dark-hued, swirling offerings with the house lights left partly on tonight, Swans soon accrue a profoundly compelling, brutal beauty that draws attention to just how ambitious and richly evocative the band’s gargantuan (selections on tonight’s setlist clock in between 20 and 30 minutes) compositions truly are.

The proceedings could be described as maximalist minimalism: the initially hushed compositions are typically rooted on a single riff or a few casually strummed chords before gradually expanding and amplifying towards hypnotically overwhelming masses of majestic, aggressive yet also unexpectedly expressive swells of powerful – and above all loud – sound.

For example, the opener The End of Forgetting initially suggests a heavy ambient soundtrack for bones drying in the desert before gliding into monolithic space rock, finishing off half an hour later with a raging percussive howl that sounds like a close neighbour to extreme Metal’s pulverising blast beats, which keeps building and intensifying to the point where you start to worry for the wellbeing of percussionists Larry Mullins and Paul Puleo.

At 71, Gira remains a compelling stage presence. Initially seated, by Paradise Is Mine (from this year’s Birthing) Gira is on his feet, conducting the band’s gangly post-punk funk bass groove (imagine a Badder Seeds) with gestures that give every impression he has snakes for arms, before guitarist Norman Westberg (a near-constant presence in the Swans ranks since the 1980s) unleashes a solo that compromises largely of jaggedly discordant noise.

Later, after Gira’s heartfelt thank you for the audience’s undivided and appreciative attention has turned into a bone-rattling yowl, he lifts his acoustic guitar in the air like an offering, the non-electric instrument seeming somewhat out of place amidst the resistance-battering barrage the band is unleashing around him.

If this tour really is the final hurrah for the ethos of splattering multi-layered aural paint on the largest possible canvas that has characterised the group’s sound since Swans reconvened after a 15-year hiatus for 2012’s superb The Seer, the current iteration of the band is certainly signing off on a towering high.