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Team Rock Great Annihilator album review
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Swans - The Great Annihilator album review 28 Apr 2017 / by Dom Lawson New York’s no-wave heroes give the mid-90s a polish Few veteran artists revisit their back catalogues with the same degree of care and precision that Michael Gira has shown in recent times. As with other Swans reissues, this elegant new edition of the New York band’s ninth album exudes an almost alarming attention to detail, not least in the sparkling clarity and oomph of the remastering. First unveiled in 1995, The Great Annihilator has often been overlooked, adrift in the nebulous period between Swans’ early-90s creative high and the monstrous finality of 1996’s Soundtracks For The Blind, but in truth it’s one of Gira’s most focused statements. The lurching and venomous Celebrity Lifestyle and Killing For Company’s seat-edge seven minutes are among Swans’ most devastating moments: the former a weirdly catchy no-wave hoedown, the latter an object lesson in sonic unease. As if the main album wasn’t mesmerising enough, this reissue comes with Gira’s astonishing Drainland solo album as a welcome bonus. A stripped down but typically intense affair, it was originally released six months after the main event and the connection between the two is self-evident. It ends with the woozy warmth of Blind, which......
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Big Takeover Great Annihilator Review
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Swans - The Great Annihilator/Drainland (Young God) 27 April 2017 by Chuck Foster By 1995, Swans had evolved through several styles of music, from no wave skronk to punishing industrial sludge to Southern Gothic ballads to driving, droning guitar rock. At the core, however, an uncompromising attitude remained the glue that held it all together, making each change a logical step in progression rather than an inability to focus. Finally, the album that was laughably dismissed by some critics as an attempt at mainstream accessibility sees a fully remastered reissue alongside founder/frontman Michael Gira’s debut solo album from the same year. More than any previous album, The Great Annihilator compiles the band’s various forays into a succinct sonic “best of.” Here, the intense thudding percussion that marked their earlier work meets the heavy majestic drone of their later. Dark, swampy ballads emerge from the din as well, making it the album that laid the blueprint for the Swans’ second wave. Every nuance, from 2010’s My Father Will Guide Me up a Rope to the Sky to last year’s The Glowing Man, can be heard, including Gira’s lamenting drawl encapsulating Iggy Pop, Jim Morrison and Johnny Cash, while keyboardist Jarboe also turns out some stellar vocal performances, particularly on “Mother/Father.” Drainland, on the other......
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Pitchfork Great Annihilator review
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by Saby Reyes-Kulkarni Contributor By 1995’s The Great Annihilator, Swans weren’t imitating pop music so much as swallowing its features to create something monstrous. This deluxe reissue also includes Michael Gira’s solo LP Drainland. Michael Gira was just two years away from pulling the plug on his band Swans when it released The Great Annihilator in 1995. Well before then, by the late 1980s in fact, it was clear that the shape-shifting experimental outfit had morphed into something quite far removed from the brutishly loud, grinding repetition of its early efforts. The difference was most glaring on its surprisingly faithful covers of Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” and Blind Faith’s “Can’t Find My Way Home.” From there, though, Gira and company re-calibrated their ability to bastardize pop music for a sound that was anything but conventional, even when they opted for seemingly traditional song structures and arrangements. The Great Annihilator documents a configuration of Swans that wore pop, country, and lounge stylings in a way that no longer clashed with the malevolence of the group’s spirit. By this point, Swans weren’t imitating pop music so much as swallowing its features to create something monstrous. And although the album suggests that Swans were still far cry from the orchestral ensemble Gira assembled when he......
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Great Annihilator Mojo review
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Paste Review of the Day: Swans - The Great Annihilator/Michael Gira - Drainland
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Paste Review of the Day: Swans - The Great Annihilator/Michael Gira - Drainland By Matt Fink | April 24, 2017 | 10:25am https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/04/paste-review-of-the-day-swans---the-great-annihila.html In 1995, Swans were a band in transition. Having maintained an album-a-year pace for most of their existence, they had taken an unusually long three years to release The Great Annihilator. By that point, Michael Gira and his constantly shifting lineup of bandmates had already laid the groundwork for a particularly caustic brand of industrial and noise music, mutating through No Wave, avant garde minimalism and surprisingly approachable experimental rock. But by the mid-’90s, Gira was restless and ready to move on, only two years away from disbanding the act altogether (albeit temporarily). The Great Annihilator would be the penultimate statement for that era of this project. Twenty-two years later, Gira admits in the press release for the album’s remastered reissue that he was never satisfied with the original’s murky, reverb-drenched mix. A lack of time and money had forced them to issue something that wasn’t quite what they wanted. After Bill Rieflin, drummer for the album, discovered the long-lost master tapes in his archive, Gira finally got his second chance at perfecting an LP that most fans already consider to be......