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Originally Posted by h8kurdt
Having listened to it I'll say this-they've done it again.
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For sure. I've stopped playing it completely. I was going to write a review of the album for a music blog, but I realized that doing so would require too many pre-release listens for me to still feel the rush of blood to my head when opening the vinyl copy that is being shipped to my house next month. I gave it roughly 4 start to finish listens, and pushed it out of my head as much as I possibly could.
All I can really remember now is that it didn't disappoint in the slightest, and that parts of it may actually require more attention and thought than the Seer did. And the Seer was not a "put in and rock out" album. Not for me. It was like performing a lengthy, intricate, high-stakes metaphorical surgery on my own brain.
I'm just one of those assholes who thinks, "Hey, if you're going to put THAT much time and effort into a piece of music, then there has to be something behind it; some reason for every decision . And I like to dissect that shit because I think I'm smarter than pretty much everyone, so it's like a challenge to me... The album roars, "Think you can figure me out, huh. Well, come on then!" And I put on a grim face and say, "Let's do this" while I unsheathe my
Zanpakutō and charge into battle....
Wait, I'm getting
Bleach confused with real life again. Sorry.
Anyway, it is true that I'm a pretty scientific thinker, and I tend to use logic and empiricism whenever possible (except when it comes to graduate student codes of conduct in cognitive neuroscience programs... Hah!) but ART mysteries me, because there are no rules, operational definitions, charts, graphs, or equations to use to better understand it. It's all about fleeting moments in time, and snap decisions made by people much more talented and imaginative than I will ever be.
This is why I love Swans. This is why I dove head first into Sonic Youth at age 15, after hearing the (then utterly) perplexing "Bull in the Heather," and not knowing how to respond. This is why I love music that provokes and takes chances and fucks with the listener... It's because it is, for me, a more meaningful experience than listening to music that presses all the right buttons and is manufactured to activate pleasure centers in the brain. That shit's easy.
But standing at a Swans show, being bludgeoned to death by guitars that feel like axes in your ear drums, surrounded by maniacs, drenched in someone else's sweat, feeling my body age and weaken more rapidly due to the sheer intensity of the sensory onslaught in front of me and
loving every minute of it? That makes no goddamn sense. I hate having to share neighborhoods with other people! I'm claustrophobic and I'm a clean freak and loud noises make me nervous. So why does erratic, droning, noisy music make me feel like a fucking god? And why does this music even exist? Obviously there is a like minded soul behind it, and that is probably the true appeal.
Anyway, I think about music and other things too much. It's starting to become a serious problem, and I'm beginning to worry that it may be a textbook cognitive malfunction. But fuck it, NEW SWANS!! WOOO!!!