★★★★★
I'll begin by admitting that before To Be Kind I'd never heard Swans before. I've been fully aware of the band and some of its personnel (Michael Gira and Jarboe primarily) for many years, but in my formative years my impression was that they wouldn't be for me. It wasn't that I was scared of what I might have heard, hell, I liked Big Black and the Butthole Surfers so I wasn't a sensitive soul, but I thought that Swans might have been more discordant and noisy than even my ears could take...
- www.punknews.org
2014-06-07
★★★★★
Don't call it a comeback. The second coming of New York experimental rockers, Swans is turning into a musical career in its own right with the release of To Be Kind, the follow up to 2012's uncompromising and acclaimed epic The Seer. For those who were in any way enamoured with the intense brutality of that record, To Be Kind , will come as a welcome second helping with the staple ingredients of menace, anti-structure and chaos returning with gusto...
- www.undertheradar.co.nz
2014-06-03
★★★★★
To be kind is not to love: love is an essentially violent act. Love won't keep us together; love isn't all you need. Love is evil. It's the enactment of a cosmic imbalance--a forceful selection of one thing at the expense of everything else, overriding reason and justice alike. It is unique, yes, but only as a uniquely creative form of destruction...
- cokemachineglow.com
2014-06-03
★★★★★
Available on: Mute / Young God With The Seer, there was a feeling that the "rope to the sky" had been climbed to its last twist. A reminder that rock music still has the capacity to be incredible, Swans' 2012 epic left the impression that band leader Michael Gira had reached a conclusion in his quest to find his place in the universe. To Be Kind is the wave rolling back, as all that existential rage and cosmic hunger subsides and becomes something different...
- www.factmag.com
2014-05-31
★★★★★
Another set of pulverising epics from Michael Gira... In 2006, when asked about the possibility of a Swans reunion, Michael Gira was unequivocal. "Absolutely not, never," he announced. "Dead and gone. I have more interesting things to do." It certainly looked that way. Since Swans' dissolution in 1997, Gira had found new, rather hippyish kin in the shape of Akron/Family and Devendra Banhart, whose early albums he released on his label Young God, and was himself making new and worthwhile music...
- www.uncut.co.uk
2014-05-28
★★★★★
To Be Kind sees experimental post-rock titans Swans continue with the sound developed in their 2012 release, The Seer. Released under the band's own label, Young God Records, To Be Kind can only be described as a refined savagery, with unsettling metronomic tracks shackling listener and music together with its dark instrumentals and near flawless structure...
- www.beat.com.au
2014-05-27
★★★★★
SWANS - To Be Kind
Album:
To Be Kind
Artist: Swans
Label: Young God
Release Date: May 13, 2014
younggodrecords.com
BY MICHAEL TOLAND
Apparently Swans was not done with epics after the gleefully excessive The Seer...
- blurtonline.com
2014-05-20
★★★★★
Swans -- To Be Kind (Young God)
Three full studio albums into their reinvigorated latest phase, and Swans' ability to surprise remains as potent as ever To Be Kind might just be the most startling and uncompromising of the trio, although these qualities take time to unveil themselves.
The first three tracks sound almost a mile away from the up-front claustrophobic density of predecessor The Seer; they are built around more conventional rock idioms...
- dustedmagazine.tumblr.com
2014-05-17