I want Michael Gira to have my babies (a terrifying thought)
11 years ago
I grow more and more convinced as time goes on that the Swans may just be the greatest band in the world.
I adore their output throughout the late 80s and 90s (Great Annihilator being my personal favorite), but their comeback has just blown me away. Aren't artists supposed to be LESS good when they make a "come back?"
2010's My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky / Look At Me Go
Brilliant.
2012's The Seer
Utterly amazing.
2014's To Be Kind.
Holy Shit. The best Swans album ever?? One of the best albums ever??
Oh shit and blood! Forever love!
I adore their output throughout the late 80s and 90s (Great Annihilator being my personal favorite), but their comeback has just blown me away. Aren't artists supposed to be LESS good when they make a "come back?"
2010's My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky / Look At Me Go
Brilliant.
2012's The Seer
Utterly amazing.
2014's To Be Kind.
Holy Shit. The best Swans album ever?? One of the best albums ever??
Oh shit and blood! Forever love!
FA+

What sort of genres do you like?
I literally like just about any type of music out there with the exception of polka and related genres (zydeco, tejano, etc.).
The late 60s early 70s was probably the absolute best decade for rock music in my opinion. Tons of amazing stuff like Gong, Soft Machine, Flower Traveling Band, T2, etc.
And of course I love the 80s for all the coldwave, new wave, goth, punk, weird pop, and bedroom recordings. I am sad I was not old enough to be an awkward goth punk in the 80s.
stupidly I haven't listened to anything else, where to go from here???????
also those babies are going to have some pretty intense stares
That's their first album! So if you want to keep exploring their discography in order---especially if you like their rough, more industrial sound---you could try Cop. Then there's Greed / Holy Money which I personally like most from Swans' earlier period. It's really plodding and chugging and just awesome sounding.
Then there's Children of God, which is a big departure from their earlier sound with more folk elements, sort of paving the way for how they'd eventually sound. Burning World was also just re-released from around this period, and it's a lot more mellow and even beautiful at times. Their early 90s stuff (White Light From The Mouth Of Infinity, Love Of Live, Omniscience) follows in the same vein, becoming more and more transcendent and beautiful.
Then comes Great Annihilator. which brings back a lot of the heaviness from their earlier period but still manages to sound beautiful as well as scary. To me this is the culmination of everything leading up to it.
After that, their sound became more drone-intensive with Soundtracks For The Blind. Really gorgeous stuff, but kinda difficult to get into unless you love drones (I love 'em). They also start focusing more on a formula of building their songs more and more and more until they erupt into great crescendos.
They disbanded around this point, only to return in 2010 many years later. Better than ever in my opinion. Their newest materials seems to borrow from everything they've done before, mixing folk and rock with more abstract noise, and they've continued to refined their ability to build these complex passages up into soul-shaking explosive crescendos. If you want, you could totally check out their last two albums The Seer and To Be Kind which are just awesome in every way and then explore their past discography and be none-the-worse for it.
Here's one of my favorite tracks off of their latest album:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2bMsYb9P-k
I'm going to save your blurb in a wordpad document
BOREDOMS
(including offshoots like BoaDrum and Floating Guitar BOrchestra)