Schwanenspiel is a double CD commemorating a live performance of the German martial industrial band Von Thronstahl and the Italian neo-folk band Rose Rovine E Amanti. The concert happened at Schwanen in the Oberschwaben region of Germany on the 8th December 2007, and I was particularly interested to receive this album for review, as it happens that I saw these two bands play together in Rome just a few months earlier, on the 22nd September, so I was curious to hear how similar this performance was.
The title Schwanenspiel seems to be a play on words – the usual German word for ‘swansong’ is ‘Schwanengesang’, but ‘Schwanenspiel’ could also be rendered as ‘swansong’. But the wordplay goes deeper than this - ‘Spiel’ also means ‘game’, so ‘Schwanenspiel’ could also be ‘swan-game’ or ‘Schwanen-game’. And ‘schwanen’ is also a verb, meaning ‘to have misgivings’ – so ‘Schwanenspiel’ could also mean ‘game of misgivings’. I'm not a native German speaker, so maybe I'm way off the mark here, but it seems like this title has several possible layers of meaning. Maybe someone who really speaks German could enlighten me. The album cover has a swan on it, so the swansong reference is definitely there.
In any case, ‘game of misgivings’ seems like quite an appropriate appellation for this album. Any performance by Von Thronstahl in their homeland is liable to protests and disruption from Antifa activists, due to the group’s controversial right-wing image. Gigs tend not to be publicly advertised in advance, and getting the performance to happen at all involves a game of cat and mouse with the Antifa.
Disc one of Schwanenspiel contains Von Thronstahl’s set, with the band on this occasion comprising vocalist Josef K., Lars W. on acoustic guitar, Andrea M. on drums and Damiano from Rose Rovine E Amanti on electric guitar. After the experimental sound collage, gunfire and French spoken-word samples of ‘Einklang’, Von Thronstahl’s set contains 12 tracks, mixing classics like ‘Mitternachtsberg’, ‘Europa Calling’, ‘Kristall’, ‘Under The Mask Of Humanity’ and ‘Adoration To Europa’ with material from Sacrificare, last year’s acclaimed album on Cold Spring Records, including ‘Age Of Decay And Democrazy’, ‘Gloomy White Sunday’ and ‘Molti Piu Onore’. Josef is in fine voice, and the sound quality is good, with the recording being taken directly from the mixing desk with no overdubs. One of the interesting aspects of Von Thronstahl has always been Josef K.’s strategic appropriation of parts of rock history, in a similar way to Laibach’s slyly subversive cover versions, and this performance includes several nods to Von Thronstahl’s predecessors, ranging from the AC/DC-inspired guitar riff of ‘Bells’ through covers of Joy Division’s ‘Walked In Line’ and Death In June’s ‘Runes And Men’, to perhaps the most unexpected inclusion, a cover of ‘The Partisan’, originally written in 1943 by French Resistance fighter Emmanuel D'Astier de la Vigerie, but now best known in the version recorded in 1969 by Leonard Cohen. This is the first recorded version by Von Thronstahl to be released, and it’s spirited but a bit ragged, with Andrea on drums in particular seeming a bit unsure of when to start and stop. The version of ‘Adoration To Europa’ given here is particularly pugnacious, although some of the electric guitar seems out of place and too loud in the mix. ‘Molti Piu Onore’ is played as a Cramps-style rockabilly stomper, with twang guitar and juicy brass flourishes, which works well. All in all, this is a good document of an entire Von Thronstahl set, with the customary rough edges. I've seen this band play twice now, and both performances were a lot of fun, but also chaotic and beset by sound problems. Josef is a very charismatic and engaging frontman, though, and that’s often enough to carry the performance through, combined with the undeniable outlaw chic of this widely-banned and always controversial group.
Disc two contains Rose Rovine E Amanti’s set, with singer and guitarist Damiano Mercuri accompanied by drummer Andrea M. and Josef K. on backing vocals, as well as Oskar van Dijk, the cellist from Anglo-Dutch neo-classical project H.E.R.R., in his first-ever live performance with Rose Rovine E Amanti. The set opens with two short and fragmentary covers, firstly a brief burst of Kurt Weill’s ‘Whiskey Bar’, as performed by The Doors, followed by a English version of Jacques Brel’s ‘My Death’. The first full song is ‘Anime In Fiamme’, which first appeared on Grain, the split album which Rose Rovine E Amanti released in 2006 with German neo-folk band Belborn. This song includes cello, although it seems too low in the mix, with a very dry sound. ‘Amsterdam’ is another Jaques Brel cover. The best song on here is probably ‘Soldato Cristiano’ from the 2006 album Rituale Romanum, which has a powerful riff and backing vocals from Josef K. However, I'm sorry to say that the cello just sounds a bit wrong throughout this set. It’s certainly not impossible for Rose Rovine’s sound to accommodate a cello in place of Pamela Gargiuto’s violin work, but the press release for this album is at pains to point out that Oskar van Dijk had had very little rehearsal time with the band before playing live, so evidently I'm not the only one to think that the cello sounds a bit iffy.
Disc two concludes with two previously unreleased tracks. ‘Gib Alarm!’ features Lars from Von Thronstahl on vocals, with lyrics taken from the German writer Heinrich B?ll. The epilogue, ‘Lieber Schwan (Ausklang)’, is in fact not by Rose Rovine at all – it has a brooding orchestral arrangement by Josef K. accompanying Fenja W. reciting part of the libretto of Wagner’s opera Lohengrin.