CHILDREN OF GOD

The culmination of Swans' early post-punk no wave era offers up what is, for the most part, a unique sonic experience. Not entirely - album opener New Mind sounds like The Fall so much I swear that Michael Gira is doing some sort of Mark E. Smith impersonation on the vocals. Dark post-punk nearly-gothic music running down religion isn't exactly rare, but music which sounds like it's full on dead and rotting on the inside like some sort of sonic zombie is a whole other deal. It's no surprise that from here they went down the full-on gothic neofolk route they took from The Burning World onwards, because this takes their early sound about as far as it can go without descending into absurd self-parody.