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The Skinny Swans @ Òran Mór, Glasgow, 18 May
Swans @ Òran Mór, Glasgow, 18 May ★★★★★ Live Review by Lewis Wade Swans are known for making very lengthy, very loud music. They also have a fierce live reputation as when this music is transferred to the live setting it makes for a remarkably intense experience. Performing for over two hours, with no breaks, and only playing five songs is not your standard rock concert. 'Intense' is the operative word at a Swans show. They open with an unreleased song, The Knot, which builds very slowly (even by Swans... Read more...
The Seventh Hex Interview
Swans Interview 2nd May 2017 Following the unprecedented critical and commercial success of Swans’ double-album masterworks ‘The Seer’ and ‘To Be Kind’, Michael Gira announced that the existing iteration of the band would only produce one more album and tour. ‘The Glowing Man’, as with its predecessors, is an expansive two-hour epic containing lengthy compositions that the band developed during their momentous tours. Throughout the latest release, Gira is less a songwriter than a summoner, channelling unspeakable amounts of energy into ritualistic spectacles. Many of the songs start out with... Read more...
Swans Perform At The Roundhouse on Getty Images
http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/event/swans-perform-at-the-roundhouse-700055453#michael-gira-of-swans-performs-at-the-roundhouse-on-may-27-2017-in-picture-id689138258 Read more...
Smells Like Infinite Sadness Great Annihilator review
Swans ‘The Great Annihilator'(Remastered Edition) Review by SLIS on APRIL 21, 2017    Swans: ‘The Great Annihilator’ (Deluxe Edition) Review: underrated 1995 album gets deluxe remastered double-vinyl reissue.  ★★★★★ To say NYC noise rock legends SWANS have had a unique career trajectory is an understatement. Whereas most bands that formed in the 80s subsist by playing their back catalogue on the nostalgia circuit, Swans have become more popular than ever. Indeed their album triptych of 2012’s The Seer, 2014’s To Be Kind and last year’s The Glowing Man has been some of the most well received work of their career. As a result many of... Read more...
The Line of Best Fit Great Annihilator review
Swans’ The Great Annihilator chews us up and swallows us whole By Luke Cartledge / 21 APRIL 2017, 17:32 BST Like many of the group’s younger fans, my first exposure to Swans arrived with the release of 2012’s The Seer. Although it wasn’t the first post-reformation Swans record, it’s a work of such power and import that, for me at least, it burned a searing wound into its creators’ immediate past and future. Semi-ignorant though I was of the group’s history, and indeed of its contemporary context, to be introduced to Swans by such an album as that temporarily supressed... Read more...
Team Rock Great Annihilator album review
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... Read more...
Big Takeover Great Annihilator Review
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... Read more...
Pitchfork Great Annihilator review
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... Read more...
Great Annihilator Mojo review
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Paste Review of the Day: Swans - The Great Annihilator/Michael Gira - Drainland
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.... Read more...

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