Swans - The '10s

They returned once more, to put the final nail in the coffin of rock music. M Gira and company have literally dissembled all that came before and stuffed it back in the womb, cowering and frightened, naked and permanently scarred.

Swans - The '00s

And by "Swans" I mean Swans-related. M Gira ended Swans in 1997, and by 1999 he was back under the Angels Of Light moniker.  What started out as a more subdued acoustic-based project slowly made its way to pretty much sounding like Swans by 2007's "We Are Him" album.  But gira did produce a lot of great music under the AoL name, so don't make the mistake of dismissing it.

Swans - The '90s

Swans consistently produced some of the best music of the 1990s until breaking up in 1997. M Gira was prolific, pouring out albums under the aliases Swans, Skin, World of Skin, Body Lovers, and his own name... all sounding rather like the musical equivalent of Dostoyevsky.

Swans - the '80s

Swans destroyed rock music. They took it apart, disseminated its innards and then reassembled it, all in the span of 6 years. The debut album is worthy of its title, undeniably one of the ugliest records ever made. But by the end of the decade, Swans produced some of the most beautiful music. And thus has been the duality ever since.