Usually, in interviews, there’s a brief bit of smalltalk at the beginning and the end. “Thanks for taking the call,” “Appreciate the time,” and that sort of thing. A question I get asked a lot is, “Hey, are you coming out to X show?” It’s something people ask mostly to be polite.

At the end of our interview, when Swans guitarist/vocalist Michael Gira asked me if I’d be on hand for either the I’ll be Your Mirror fest in Asbury Park that his band is playing or the Brooklyn show preceding, I said I’d like to hit up Brooklyn (to which David Eugene Edwards of Wovenhand has been added for an acoustic set), but that if I did, I’d have to deal with being surrounded by Williamsburg hipsters.

Gira‘s response — without a second of delay or hesitation of any kind — was, “bring a flamethrower.”

Shit you not.

It’s that kind of unbending will for confrontation that’s helped Gira and Swans cast a hugely influential net on underground music, be it Neurosis and the post-metal born in their wake or Godspeed You! Black Emperor and the avant-garde style experimentation they in turn have fostered. Swans are a root band, setting a lineage of distinct and aggressive crescendos. Their music feels like it’s crashing down on you as you listen.

Despite the long break between the studio albums Soundtracks for the Blind (1996) and My Father Will Guide Me up a Rope to the Sky (2010) and Gira‘s shift in direction that took place with the dark acoustic-led Americana of Angels of Light (whose seven-album discography is a beast unto itself), that oppressive feeling has remained consistent. The personnel may have changed — and Gira‘s drive for challenge has led to a sound that’s moving forward rather than trying to harken back to something it would inevitably fail to capture — but new Swans is still Swans.

My Father Will Guide Me up a Rope to the Sky was one of 2010’s densest and most crushing releases, and in the interview below Gira discusses what led him to revive the band, the development of even newer material — some of which has already been recorded — a forthcoming live album, the practicalities involved in putting out music on his own label, Young God Records, the relationship between Swans and Angels of Light and much more.

Complete Q&A is after the jump. Please enjoy.

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…Because when you’re still at the office at 8PM, it’s time for some apocalyptic shit.

Screw it, I’m leaving.

With the first new Swans album in 14 years, My Father Will Guide Me up a Rope to the Sky (Young God), vocalist/guitarist/producer/songwriter Michael Gira is showing how a reunion is properly handled. You don’t just go out there and trot out the greatest hits. You don’t make it a blatant cash-grab. You create something. You reenter a headspace, make a new record, and give your fans a new context for understanding how you’ve grown and progressed since the last go around. Most importantly, you don’t try to remake what you’ve already done. Gira, who’s spent his post-Swans years developing the apocalyptic-folk strains of Angels of Light, reignites Swans with the vigor of a new band already established in its approach, vehement in its creativity and positively crushing in its sonics.

Joining him in the endeavor are former Swans guitarists Norman Westberg and Christoph Hahn, as well as a host of personalities from various Swans and Angels of Light tours and albums, including drummer/percussionists Phil Puleo and Thor Harris and bassist Chris Pravdica. Conspicuously absent is Jarboe. Gira’s songwriting is center, as ever, and several of the My Father Will Guide Me up a Rope to the Sky cuts could be heard on the precursor limited acoustic record I am Not Insane (also Young God), which was released in order to finance the recording of this new album. Here, though, the tracks are fleshed out with sundry noises and percussive twists and very much “plugged in,” opener “No Words/No Thoughts” tackling a godless universe with all the crushing weight that implication has for mortality. At over nine minutes, the song undulates rhythmically, reeling back and unleashing a growing barrage of new elements one after another until cutting to Gira’s vocals so the effect can be even greater when the music starts again.

So this new incarnation of Swans isn’t afraid to be heavy, but there’s more to their sound than slow builds and crashes. Anyone wondering why Swans had such an influence over the generation of acts that followed need look no further than tracks like “Reeling the Liars In” or the even-more sinister “Jim,” which evoke dark atmospheres that’s largely to Gira’s desolate-sounding vocals. In “Jim” especially, Gira’s vocal cadence shows what players like Steve Von Till and Scott Kelly of Neurosis were able to glean from Swans’ original run and put in the context of their own work. One could say the same for “My Birth,” on which every snare hit feels like a gut-punch in an insistent rhythm the likes of which Godflesh based most of its tenure on. Despite a number of jumps in aesthetic, from “Reeling the Liars In,” which but for the personnel involved probably could have been an Angels of Light song and no one would have batted an eye, to “Jim,” to “My Birth,” and so on, Gira is what ties the album together.

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