Swans’ Birthing feels less like an album and more like a gravitational force - an all consuming mass of sound and sensation that pulls you in slowly. Across its sprawling runtime, Michael Gira and company weave together nearly every thread in the Swans tapestry: from the primordial abrasion of Filth to the ceremonial sprawl of The Glowing Man. But Birthing isn’t a victory lap. It’s a ritual. It’s a culmination without closure, a dense, meditative descent into something unknowable yet deeply familiar. At times, it moves with the patience of tectonic plates; at others, it lunges with the unpredictable fury of a creature cornered.
What’s remarkable is how Birthing sidesteps nostalgia while still embracing the DNA of earlier works. Gira’s voice is more spectral than sermonizing, less commanding and more conjuring - often lurking beneath layers of cavernous drums, bowed guitars, and the haunting drift of organ and strings. Tracks unfurl in long, deliberate arcs, often abandoning traditional song structure in favor of mood, space, and repetition. Swans have always leaned toward endurance tests, but here the challenge feels more spiritual than physical. It’s not about surviving the album—it’s about surrendering to it.
There’s something disarmingly human beneath all the dread. Birthing doesn’t just depict darkness; it meditates on the persistence of life within it. It's cover - reminiscent of the artwork "Black Sun" by Damien Hirst. Unfamiliar is fine, but all you must know is it's a large, circular piece made of thousands of dead flies epoxied together. Both Birthing, and Black Sun are not hopeful in any traditional sense, but there’s a kind of defiant grace in refusal to look away. Seventeen albums in, Swans continue to create music that doesn’t so much evolve as it mutates—shifting form and focus while remaining unmistakably theirs. This is not a band chasing trends or fan approval. It’s a band doing exactly what it needs to do, for as long as it needs to do it. Refuse to look away.
For those who might’ve grown up discovering Swans through forums or passed-down vinyl copies of Soundtracks for the Blind - Birthing will feel like a hard-won communion. It’s heavy without relying on volume, intense without theatrics. This is the sound of a band refusing to dilute its vision, even as time sharpens it. Birthing may mark the end of a particular sonic chapter, but it offers no finality - only transformation.
As always with Swans, the only way out is through.
Order the 3xLP of Birthing here.
