You might not expect a Tel Aviv doom metal music singer to release a moving spoken-word concept album featuring excerpts from a Holocaust survivor’s diary, but that’s what Yishai Sweartz has done in Clouds of War, being released June 20.
The diary belonged to Sweartz’s grandfather, Moshe Szniecki, a Holocaust survivor.
Three years in the making, Clouds of War is a collaboration between Sweartz, singer for the Israeli band, Tomorrow’s Rain, and German musicians Anja Huwe and Mona Mur.
The album features such dark lines as, “They were laughing in our faces… that day, about 6,000 people were slaughtered… we knew and we realized that there is nothing we can do in the ghetto anymore. We have to escape, we have to run. We cannot trust God, we cannot trust religion, we cannot trust the Germans, we could not trust anyone,” which is from the album’s first track, “By the Morning, It Started.”
Szniecki, born in Baranovichy in western Belarus, lost his entire family in the Holocaust and ran away alone to the frozen forests of Belarus at age 17, where he survived as a partisan for five years. Moving to Israel after the war, he fought in all of the country’s wars and died at peace at age 94.
In his diaries, Szniecki described in great detail the acts of cruelty he witnessed, such as the jubilation of the residents of the town, who happily watched the murder of Jews, waiting to loot the Jews’ property seconds after they were shot to death. His European appearance allowed him to break into Nazi military bases posing as a German soldier for many retaliatory operations, such as placing explosives on railway tracks.
Speaking about how the album came about, Sweartz said, “I asked Anja to create background noises for the new Tomorrow’s Rain album. She agreed, we started talking, and the conversation evolved into the history of our families. Once she heard all about my grandfather, she wanted us to make a song about it, which later turned into a whole album.”
As for Mur, she served as Clouds of War’s producer. Sweartz sent her recordings of himself reading excerpts from his grandfather’s diary that were recorded while he was hiding in his shelter in Tel Aviv when Hamas bombed Israel in May 2021. Mur’s contributions led to further defining the album’s eerie, oppressive atmosphere.
When asked why the album focuses more on dark ambiance and spoken word sections than music, Sweartz said, “We just took the texts and started to play with them. We didn’t suddenly sit down and say, ‘OK, we’ll make an album and its style will be this, that, or the other thing.’
“After looking at the texts, Anja asked me to send recordings of me reading them, then she sent me all kinds of background music. The idea was to create something closer to a soundtrack rather than a traditional rock or metal record.”
Evolving gradually
SWEARTZ SAID that the album’s style evolved gradually.
“This whole album was done with a lot of spontaneity and the will to document. These aren’t really songs; they’re excerpts from the diary, and didn’t have their own names.
“Everything just came out in the ways that felt right. Even if we thought of something at any given moment that led us to a particular name for a song, I feel as though I’d ruin the experience for people by spoon-feeding them why every song is named the way it is.
“I think a really cool part of listening to music is to take half a spoonful and complete the other half yourself. Sometimes the picture you paint in your mind using your imagination ends up being more enjoyable to you than explicitly sticking to whatever meaning was intended during the writing process. You end up connecting to that personal interpretation more.”
Clouds of War is filled with strong lyrics like, “We knew that we had only one choice; to escape. We knew it’s not gonne be easy in the forest, but at least in the forest we had a chance to live or to die. While in the ghetto, there was no chance. There was only death and death and death.”
Despite the intensity of lyrics like these and the atmospheric music, Sweartz said he knew that such a concept album on a dark, historical theme would be a tough sell in today’s music world.
“On one hand, I felt like I was making history and getting to know my grandfather and his brothers. On the other hand, it’s also really sad because you know in 2024, people don’t give a s---. Unless you have a Tweet or Instagram story of some guy with abs on the beach or some woman working out, it won’t get any responses. In today’s day and age, people’s ears are sealed and their mind is engineered.”
Although Szniecki is no longer with us, through his grandson’s efforts, his story will live on in Clouds of War. Perhaps this project can serve as an inspiration to listeners who might be inspired to delve into their own family members’ stories.