Yellow Swans - At All End

Yellow Swans
At All End
(10.2007, Load)
9.5/10

Beauty is not usually the first word associated with guttural noise produced by Yellow Swans. Last year's Psychic Secessions saw the band careening through extended blasts of distortion heavy industrial electronics that must have been the envy of their contemporaries. Yet even with a long history of setting polluted gristle to tape and clearing rooms playing it live, Yellow Swans' latest Load Records release, At All Ends, is actually...pretty. Now I need to insert a qualifier here: this is the Yellow Swans. Nevertheless, gone are the deep guttural growls and screeching electronic squabbles of previous albums. The beauty Yellow Swans have made here is buried deep with deafening walls of multiple layers of distorted guitar, beauty that is waterlogged in trenches of feedback. At All Ends contains a deafening grandeur whose terrible magnificence spreads ominously throughout its pieces. The album spans five tracks, each a heavy sheet of glacial gorgeousness. Each sings sorrowfully like a glorious sea liner sinking into frozen waters, inch by inch, to the horror of its passangers. A definite shocker, Yellow Swans have produced one of the great surprises of 2007 and marked themselves as one of the most dynamic groups on the modern experimental noise-scape. At All Ends is a revelation of gorged heaviness that sparkles with undeniable heart; a work of intense depth and beauty.

-Mr. Thistle

Yellow Swans - "Our Oases"